Parties

It used to be that you would go to a party and then go home with someone and if he reached for a beer in the morning or otherwise became tarnished in your mind, or if he got up early and left a note for you to lock the back door, and then he never called, you would know that it had been a one-night stand. If, on the other hand, you both got up and out at the same time and went for brunch, then you had a Relationship. And the Relationship would chug along for months, which was a long time then, but it was a fragile thing, though it could be intense and you would spin a life together in the future, in your head, and then the Relationship would fray and fray and then break.

This is why you never got so good at arguing, at talking things out, because when things got tough, one or both people would bow out. It would be painful, and memorable--both the breakup and thinking about the breakup and the Relationship itself, and sometimes you would be teary and resentful for months longer than the Relationship had lasted. And then you would go to another party.

This was in the late 70's and 80's, before AIDS was a widespread threat. This was back when you had to choose which Halloween party to go to because you'd received three (paper) invitations, and there were always costume parties where people would dress up as A Shadow of My Former Self or Free-Floating Anxiety or John the Baptist with a collar around his head that was supposed to be a plate. When you could have a birthday party and ask everyone to dress up like a lizard and they would. When it was easy to make friends, because everyone was untethered, and moving, moving, into an apartment and making curtains for it, or into a new job that was absolutely perfect or a stepping-stone to one that was, and everyone had open calendars, and there was room to meet for lunch or dinner or even breakfast at Ann Sather's on a weekday at 7:30 am. The L was faster then, with its A and B and AB stops, and you could jump on at Belmont at 8:30 and be downtown easily in 15 or 20 minutes, like the CTA signs used to advertise.

This was also a time BP, Before Prozac, a time of anxiety so heavy it didn't float, it dogged you and settled around your throat--and your not sleeping enough made daily life even more difficult and brittle. But also more energetic and bright--you would leap and jump and run on the sidewalks on the way to your destination, day or night.

And then came Prozac and half a year later, L (the person, not the train), whom you met on a bright late spring morning, not at midnight at a party of a friend of a friend's, and he and you begat the longest Relationship you'd ever had, and then a mere nine years later, marriage, and one thing led to another and now there is the House. And the Rage. And you must talk about the Rage because this is a Marriage, it is supposed to be permanent, though of course you know the statistics, and a friend tells you that marriages often break apart after the buying of a home. L calls you passive aggressive and says in the past few weeks he's seen for the first time why -- and -- said you were mean, he'd never seen it before, and you feel like a failure as a person. And you say what should we do, and he says, get through it, and then you go on a long walk with J and V, you talking to J, and L talking to V, and J says marriage counseling works for some, and you think about it, and after the walk it's like it was before, BH, before the house, and the rest of the day, too, and the next. Though L still gets frustrated with you because he says you don't help him get his house ready for sale, which is partly true, at least, but you ask his advice on buying flowers to plant--one problem had been that he'd been so parental and all-knowing and bossy when he talked about not planting yet, like he was the expert, which of course he was, having tended his garden and yard for 30 years but still, you wanted to put echinacea and cosmos there in the corner to replace the dead bushes, and more geraniums in pots on the front porch steps to show possession. To prove to yourself that This is Mine. And His. To show the neighbors that you had arrived and cared about flowers. Which also means caring about the neighborhood, because your yard is public.

And you ride bikes to a party, a 50th birthday party, where everyone is supposed to dress up like the '60s, and you both are wearing your share of denim and old buttons: Labor for Hatcher, Pigasus for President '68, Question Authority, No Nukes--some from the 70s, most from L's past. The Pigasus button you just made yourself, to refer to the pig that the Yippies nominated as an alternative to Humphrey, when they gathered in the park during the the Democratic National Convention. You put on eyeliner, top and bottom, and put foundation on your lips so they hint at the chalk-white lipstick that was so popular back then. At the party you and L are the most decorated, everyone else is wearing party clothes, with a few love beads here and there. You dance to Cream and other '60s and '70s and '80s music, and there's a DJ and a disco ball and a light that casts bright green squiggles on the wall, and there's a birthday cake and cupcakes and fondue because it's retro and delicious, and there's someone who's had a 70th birthday party (which you weren't invited to) and your friend from Boston who helped shave your head and there's someone dancing around vibrant with a sleeveless top that fits closely around her real breast and the post-mastectomy one (she had silicone implants) and it looks 100 percent natural. You'd met the guest of honor years ago at another party, about 3am, at one of N's series of 39th birthday parties. Or was it 29th? In the summer of 1968 you had no notion of Pigasus, you were at summer camp, applying your eyeliner and mascara every morning, wheezing mightily, suffering from your asthma, and finally taking steroids for it, which gave you two periods in four weeks and you didn't wear tampons then. You remember your counselor telling you that Bobby Kennedy had died. A girl died at camp that year (or the next? your photo albums from camp are in boxes already), in a car accident on her way to or from a dental appointment in the nearby Ozark town, and when the summer was over the camp closed down and was sold and renamed. In early November Nixon won and a few weeks later you had your bat mitzvah, wearing velvet and taffeta inspired by the Franco Zeffirelli film Romeo and Juliet. And you wondered what your life was going to be like, if you would always be the tall one, and if boys would ever like you, and your father would tell you and your sister that when each was 35 he would buy you a Cadillac if your husband hadn't, (though no one in your family, including yourself, ever wanted a Cadillac), and you knew that at at 35 you would be so old you'd be impossibly frumpy, though your mother was 41 and elegant, and you planned after high school to go to Paris and the Pratt Insititute in New York and be an artist, or a writer, and you'd be famous, as famous as Louisa May Alcott, as you used to say to yourself, as you consoled your wheezy, asthmatic self to sleep the first time at summer camp, your head propped up on a mass of pillows the counselor had put there to help you breathe.

The Mad Weeder Strikes Again

I was indifferent to gardens in my 20s and 30s. I started appreciating them in my 40s. L loves wildflowers and wildflower walks and he has a front yard with columbine (including a hybrid created by his aunt), hens and chicks from his mother's Downstate yard, irises, poppies from his mother, hibiscus, ajuga groundcover, lilies of the valley (see photo at right), vinca and other plants I'm forgetting. In back he has cacti, false Solomon's seal, asparagus, chives, green onions, yucca, day lilies and gingham girls. He has lilac, honeysuckle and forsythia bushes. All this he will leave when he sells his house this or next year, though he will dig up some of the plants for our new place. We started taking rocks from his front yard to put in our yard. We put them in the trunk of his car and then when we got here we weren't sure what to do with them. I would've just let them sit in the trunk for the next week (We close on the house--see photo--June 30). But he didn't want to drive around with rocks in his trunk. So we put them in my storage area.

This morning I went to Michael McColly's yoga class. I recommend it. What's good is the he talks about breathing and clearing your mind and paying attention to your body. It was odd, though, to be taking a class from someone I know, and to have his familiar voice telling us what to do with our bodies and breathing. My mind buzzed around, as always. The only time I've ever been about to truly concentrate and focus is when I took yoga at the Alliance Francaise. When the teaching was in French, I had to really listen. Alas, the class wasn't always in French. The teacher would let in people who barely knew how to say Bonjour, and then she'd repeat everything in English. That's why I no longer take yoga at the Alliance. When it was an all-French experience, it was like being in a trance, wrapped in a haze of foreign language, and the haze made it feel like you were in a different place.

The yoga room was warm, because for some inexplicable reason, the heat had gone on earlier. I was hot and slightly dizzy. Perhaps the dizziness is caused by gabapentin, which I'm taking to help with the hot flashes. So what should I take for the dizziness?

Yesterday L and I bought flowers in Indiana and today I planted them in two big pots out front. We decided to put them in pots so people wouldn't trample them. Someone walked on some columbine (brought from his yard to mine) and killed it recently. Now I'm afraid that people will pick the flowers because they don't have to bend down to touch them. We shall see. We have cosmos in the middle, and around them I put snapdragons, begonias, and something that looks like impatiens but isn't. At the checkout counter yesterday I noticed special pink garden gloves for sale. With each sale, money goes to Susan G. Komen [foundation] for the Cure--at least $100,000. Both L and I looked at the gloves disparagingly, though I have to admit that $100,000 going to the Komen foundation is better than zero dollars going to the Komen foundation. But I'd rather have $100K going for research on the causes of cancer.

After yoga I walked along Broadway, where there were huge round planters holding flowers in various stages of health. Some pansies were dried up. There were weeds in all the planters and as I walked along on my way to Metropolis Coffee Company and back, I pulled weeds. I love to pull weeds. I love when all their roots (see dandelion taproot on left) come up, clean, like a thorn pulled out of a paw. It is so satisfying. Once last year I had a computer mishap and I was so upset I went in the front yard and pulled weeds. It helped. I used to squeeze the blackheads on my father's back and carefully put them on Kleenex so he could see them, dark on one end and light on the other. That was satisfying, too. You'd think I'd love to clean and would be obsessive about it, but I'm not.

As soon as we close on the house, we're going to hurry to it and start yanking out weeds and pulling off the ivy from the sides. We've already surreptitiously pulled a few lamb's quarters from around the tree in front.

Sacre Vert

The other night I was walking home from the L, toward Wrigley Field, just as the Chicago Cubs game was letting out. Therewere crowds on the street and sidewalk walking toward me. As I got near our place, I started to get vigilant. We've had problems with people walking onthe parkway (the garden area between the sidewalk and street). There are several transgressions to watch for: They walk on the flagstones that frame the parkway, dislodging them. They walk on the dirt, and thus trample the plants. They let their dogs trample the plants. They let their dogs relieve themselves on the plants. We think that our bushes turned brown and died from urine poisoning.

That night a guy had his golden retriever on a leash and was letting the dog walk in the yard. My husband L and I and my visiting friend D planted white and red-striped petunias there. In the dark you can't see which is the mulch (which several of us spread on Condo Day) and which are the plants. So I said, very casually and calmly (you haveto believe me on this): Your dog's walking on our flowers. No he's not, he said. We planted them, Is aid. We don't want them to get trampled. They kept on walking, though stepping out of the yard and onto the sidewalk. Now they were past me. The young woman with them turned around and said, You should put up a sign if you don't want people to walk there. I couldn'tbelieve this. Doesn't a frame of flagstones around flowers and plants signify Garden--Don't Smoosh? I felt anger and frustration boiling in me and so I yelled as loudly as I could, so loudly that it hurt my throat for about 10 minutes afterward (I haven't learned to yell from my diaphragm), I yelled the thing I yell when I can't stand someone and want to baffle: Que'est-ce que j'ai fait pour meriter ca? I say it fast and self-righteously.

I want the person to know I detest him and I also want to confuse him. I wouldn't mind if he felt stupid, either. I'd like him to feel stupid. It means: What did I do to deserve this? Iwant to sow confusion among my enemies, and they were my enemies, for a moment. That's why I prefer, when a stranger makes me angry, to give him the peace sign or, if I have two hands available, to form a circle or triangle with my two thumbs and pointer fingers. I want to be superior. If I were a better person, I would mean it when I make the V peace sign. But I don't.

That night I thought about yelling about my cancer but it didn't seem relevant. I guess I could have tried: Mais j'ai le cancer! Je suis malade! But that doesn't have the same punch. I don't think. Or: Don't walk on my flowers, I have cancer! But then it would seem that not wanting people to step on your plants was some sort of quirk, a side effect of chemo. Once when we saw a guy letting his dog roam in theyard, L said something to him, and the guy retorted: You ought to move to the suburbs. As if we were such property-proud bourgeois that we shouldn't live in the city. I thought later of telling the guy that L has lived in Gary, Indiana, for 30 years and no one has walked on flowers there. That's as gritty a city as they come, no huge lawns or picket (or electric) fences, no No Trespassing signs, and people don't feel the need to trample other people's flowers. Here in our dense North Side neighborhood people steal flowers in pots and dig out newly planted impatiens. They tore down and stole the American flag that we had up in front after 9/11. I had been against putting up the flag, but I recognized random vandalism when I saw it. They key our cars parked on the street. They smash car windows in order to get a few pennies inside. They stole L's bike ou tof his trunk. They pee in the alley. They yell into the night and throw their beer cans wherever they happen to land. Then they throw up on the sidewalk.

In the great scheme of things, these are minor complaints, crimes against property. (And to be fair, in the suburbs and in the subdivisions, people aren't tempted to walk in flower beds because there's plenty of room to roam.) I hear a neo-con curmudgeon in my head lamenting the decline of civil society. People have been uncivil since the dawn of civilization. As they say, just NIMBY. Or front.