A Bode to Squirrels

Frozen-eyed
Squirrel in my garden plot,
I’d throw a rock at you
If the neighbors weren’t watching.

They run across the driveway
Like thieves with loot,
raccoon-eyed squirrels with
Zinnias on their breath.

Askance-eyed
Squirrel in my garden plot –
Your brood is watching
From the owl house you stole.

I know you know, have shown you so,
Without neighbors on my tail
I’ll throw rocks at you.

See Jane Stitch

I’ve caught the Jane Austen bug after so many years of saying I didn’t like her books at all – who wants to read the minutiae of social discourse, I used to think, of which the sole goal is to arrange a “propitious marriage that secures a profitable future . . .”

 It’s as though one pot of money had been given to the British at the beginning of civilization, and Jane Austen’s characters were charged with the job of making sure it flowed into the proper channels via favorable marriages via influential connections via properly honed qualities and tempers. Money is an unwieldy river that needs coaxing and damming up and guidance lest it go astray.  Marriage is the levee.

For the young woman poised on the brink of marriage, time is a blank canvas to be used for long walks of discovery through meadows, daily practice sessions on the pianoforte, daydreaming at the embroidery hoop, social discourse at a ball, lace making and sewing, and much practice in the female art of letter writing.  One Austen heroine spends her time “nicely dressed sitting on a sofa doing some long piece of needlework of little use and no beauty.” Austen’s books chart the meanderings, the twists and turns, and the flood walls encountered by young women as they navigate toward this singular goal.

I did not enjoy Jane’s writing back in my early years as a mother when time was so hurried and my own love of writing was in holding for nearly two decades . . . and every minute was earmarked for something practical such as folding laundry or feeding a sourdough or . . . never mind.  Every minute was earmarked.

 When I read Austen now, however, I no longer resent the young woman’s expanse of time, but rather laud her for it and rest humorously in the suspension of time she endures.  Enjoy it while you can, I say.  I immerse myself in that useless needlepoint – for the supreme pleasure of watching Jane stitch.

In Jane’s world, a visit to a relative 30 miles away was meant to last no less than three weeks and more politely three months.  Her heroine's time was spent in all of the above mentioned ways, adding a broadened social circle that might likely result in a marriage proposal before she returned home.  Letters traveled, giving the news that some rich relative was sick, and by the time it reached his heirs, the old man might be buried.  A fortnight later, when all ‘hopefuls’ had gathered round for the reading of the will, they’d find out which lucky soul had inherited all the wealth (think male and oldest and nephew – nephews seem to inherit quite often in her books).  The rest would go home dejected and anxious as to where one’s resources might be cultivated next.

Refinement, discourse, position, title, civility, eloquence, approbation, disapprobation, means, defilement – these are the words she uses on every page, words that make all the difference in one’s social standing.  The discussions, habits, and carefully observed gestures of her characters, most of them derived from her own circle of friends and relatives, are mulled and cogitated and rehearsed again and again through page after page – and the only plot that underpins all these nuances is for the girl to be married well.  Most of her heroines do so, even as some of them equivocate and consider their losses and gains.

 Jane Austen herself must have thought daily about such losses and gains.  Her own parents would have loved for their aging daughter, nice looking enough, to finally say yes to one of the lucrative suitors who came her way. She did say yes once, just to make everyone happy, but changed her mind the next morning.  If a young woman married well, her entire birth family might be snared from the fate of having to dig their own potatoes (that phrase is spoken by Jane’s mother in the movie, "Becoming Jane").

 It is believed that Jane actually fell in love with a young man once – but he was not an eldest son and she was the seventh child with no stipend to bring to the marriage – therefore the connection was not “sensible.”

 Jane wasn’t thinking straight for her times.  Something in her made her think that marriage ought to be about love.  Some of her heroines have the same problem.  But Jane wasn’t stupid either.  Her own family tottered on the fence of having to dig their own potatoes every day.  Poverty is a real live wretch that lasts forever, maybe even longer than love.  She knew this.  Her first published book, Sense and Sensibility, is all about that internal struggle – the emotional versus the practical.  If only the two could be combined . . . and that’s why Jane wrote books, I’m convinced.

 Most of her heroines do get married off – for both love and money.  It must have satisfied her to make it that way.  But in our author’s real life, neither was to be her fate.  You see, there was another problem, as Jane saw it.  Jane really liked to write – and those real women in her circle, more than a few, either died in childbirth or gave birth year after year as though taunting fate with such a prospect.  There were others who had died in a different sort of way before childbirth took them – that is to say, they died to their girlhood dreams and pleasures.  One favorite niece "died" to the book she had nearly completed writing under Aunt Jane’s encouragement.  There’s no copy in existence, but there is a letter to her Aunt Jane which ‘closes the book’ on writing forevermore – for she was “a wife and mother now.” A letter back from Aunt Jane offers heartfelt condolences.  By that age, already a published author and resigned spinster, Jane must have understood the gravity of those early life decisions she had made unwittingly.

 I haven’t read all of her books yet.  I’ve started those at the beginning of her career when she was prime marriageable age, and I’m working my way chronologically to the one she left unfinished, Sanditon, when she died at age 42.  I hope she has it all figured out by then; many generations of women are counting on her.

Learning to Smoke

I’ve never liked talking on the phone, something I procrastinate doing even when calling my own children . . . it seems so awkward holding a device to the ear while talking to someone of whom you can’t even see the face . . .

Cindy would call me every night when we were young teens, 13 or 14, and I dreaded that phone call.  It would go on for an hour or more – I hardly had anything to say because I didn’t want my parents to hear me – and my mother was always in the kitchen and my father was always in the adjoining room watching TV.   Betwixt the two, everything I said could be heard.  Cindy was “boy crazy,” as my parents said, everyone said it – she was in love with Randy Rice at the time, the Methodist preacher’s son, and she would talk on and on about when they’d be married and how cute their children would be, the names she’d give them, names that went well with Rice, and the sound of her new name which would be Cindy Rice, how does that sound, say it, she’d say – so I had to say Cindy Rice into the phone over and over till she was satisfied with the sound – and of course my parents heard it too – always plagued with teenage embarrassment because of things like that.

 Cindy had a private phone line in her bedroom. Cindy could have anything she wanted just by asking – her own horse, colored pantyhose and eyeshadow, clothes from Asheville which was 100 miles away, parties at her house that included boys and the dreaded spin-the-bottle game, and membership in an Occult book club.

 I was the beneficiary of most of those books from her book club because Cindy didn’t read much and she always asked me to choose the books from her monthly selection list. That was my introduction to palmistry, astrology, yoga, meditation, and all sorts of things that were just coming to the forefront (but certainly not to the mainstream) in the early 1970’s. Maybe that’s when I began to love new books, that wonderful woody-ink smell . . .

One day after school Cindy decided to bring her horse into her bedroom to keep us company while we read each other’s futures through palmistry and astrology from the books she had acquired. The horse was well behaved and just stood there – like an elephant in the room, you could say. Cindy’s mother, a former debutante from Asheville, and perhaps the only lady who still wore hats to the grocery store, came home, walked past Cindy’s bedroom, and calmly said – just as calmly as if she had announced there was ice cream in the freezer for us to eat if we wanted it, she said, “Oh my . . . Ceen-thee-ya (Cynthia) . . . whot is that hoss doing in yor bedroom . . . “ and she didn’t even wait for an answer but rather went to her own bedroom and closed the door (softly).

Cindy’s father died suddenly when he was in his early 40’s, and I always assumed it was a heart attack but I’m not sure I ever knew – it was sudden – and it was a tragedy for the whole town because he was the bank president of the only bank in town, and every loan or financial deal among the populace was in direct relationship to this man. Everyone cried at the funeral, but not Cindy – she acted as though nothing had happened, and continued to talk about boys and that sort of thing after the funeral. I was embarrassed as I stood next to her and she rambled on about boys while my parents kept telling me it was time to go home.

A month or so later, Cindy was hospitalized for “water on the lungs” – and no one really knew why she had that condition, it just came out of nowhere – suddenly – and it sent her to the hospital. This was long before the days of Louise Hay’s metaphysical books linking the spiritual realm to bodily ailments – but even then, only a teenager, it made sense to me that the water on Cindy’s lungs had come from all those shored up tears that she never let loose at her father’s funeral. My mother agreed with me.

Soon after, the horse was sold, the house too, and the occult books were given to me for keeps – Cindy and her mother moved to Asheville. They lived in a small apartment where Cindy's room was no bigger than a large elephant. I visited her one summer and stayed for two weeks, the last time I would ever see her – two weeks spent around the complex's swimming pool learning how to smoke.

We chose "Eve" cigarettes, for they were long-stemmed and had a beautiful pattern of the Garden of Eden around the neck. We both loved the smell of menthol, so fresh and eye-opening. Cindy (we were 15 by now) would take her mother's car keys while she napped and drive us to buy Eve cigarettes – what angel watched over us those summer afternoons?

Cindy was already quite proficient at smoking when I arrived for the visit, impressing me with such phrases as, "I need a cigarette." Cindy reclined in the pool chaise with her legs crossed at the ankles, adroitly inhaling and exhaling the smoke as she talked. She looked so adult and statuesque while smoking, although she was really a round sort of person. Everything about her was round – her face, her giggles, the smoke that came from her mouth, her handwriting, even the sound of her name – but the contrasting shape of the cigarette in her hand somehow balanced her out, made her grow longer.  It suited her, as genteel women are wont to say when being nice.

 I, on the other hand, was the kind of teenager with many sharp protrusions of bone that shot up from where one hardly knew there ought to be a bone – and this cigarette in my hand felt to me like one more unwieldy offshoot that ought to be severed. I never mastered the elegant hold of the cigarette between my fingers.

 I also never mastered the inhalation – that wonderful, promising smell of menthol. The smoke would get to the middle of my throat and then be huffed out – some internal force made it do that – and the smell of chlorine from the pool would waft over to me just at that instant . . . mixing with the menthol it made me feel that I was drowning. I never admitted my fear of inhalation and drowning to Cindy; I felt like a fake – it didn’t suit me.

 I am not against smoking at all, never have been, and I would never advocate more bans on smoking . . . no more laws, please!  In fact, I think I am far more tolerant of smoking than most smokers . . . but I am not a smoker . . .

 . . . for I will forever in my mind link pool chlorine, drowning sensations, long boring conversations, nausea, sudden deaths, and the memory of Cindy’s water on the lungs – to the smell of cigarette smoke. It was a waste of time – listening to Cindy talk about all the cute boys in Asheville, struggling to see her face through billows of dirty smoke that were destined to cloud and divide our future.

Eve cigarette photo credit:
www.unionroom.com/.../2009/05/eve_cigarettes.jpg