Amy's way or the highway

Dream Dec. 17th, 2006

Nancy threatened to take a vacation. and let people take care of their own plant watering for a week. But it wasn't just watering, Nancy knew that, it was singing and pulling off the brown leaves and shifting and lifting and loving. It was more than hard to leave people's plants behind, not when she possessed that green thumb that kept Wilmette filled with Christmas Cactus' all over Wilmette in full bloom from August to July. Not with all the emergency calls from people who didn't deserve to own orchids, pleading "Nancy, I think something is happening with Carls leaves." Carl, because the first rule she required from her clients was that they name their plants so there was no mistaking their existence; you can forget about that green thing by the window, yellowing(drowning), but can you forget about Lola or Ashton or Frank? Well, maybe you can, but it weighs heavier on your conscience. It angered Nancy that just anyone could buy an orchid or a Tupidanthus calyptratus, which required more drainage than most people could muster. Truly, everyone who loves plants knows you cannot possible love a Tupidanthus calyptratus unless you purchase it it's very own pool to sit next to.

How could she go on vacation when her clients never considered insect infestation or the correct type of soil, or water amount, or light amount, or fertilizer or the temperature room their plants live in.  The wrong temperature room, for instance, was as much of an assault as making an iguana live in Alaska, and the wrong fertilizer was as sensitive an issue as feeding a newborn a veal cutlet instead of breastmilk; these not-so-tiny details mattered. 

It both broke her heart and gave her life purpose. But the heartbreak was that people with the intention of owning an orchid should require as much interviewing as someone wanting to adopt a child. Why was it okay for people who cared or knew so little about their plants to keep buying them and buying them, the way irresponsible pet owners by Dalmations on Christmas, only to toss them out within six months.

Why was killing a plant not some kind of misdemeanor? At the very least? There was just no motivation to save these poor helpless verdant creatures. How were people ever going to have a positive effect on the environment if they couldn't even water their own plants?

These were the thoughts that kept Nancy up at night, longing only for day to emerge, so she could sit alone with her latte on the three thousand dollar couch she could not afford to buy on the seventh floor of Marshall Fields, which had been renamed Macy's, which, by the way, offended her as much as someone renaming the rose.

No, she would not go on vacation this year. So no, she would not fall in love this year, in some rainforest, with some native who appreciated a plant from it's root up. She'd stay in her little private hell, where she was needed-the way those public school teachers work in those at-risk locations, constantly at risk. Nancy was a martyr and not a fake one either. She'd handle being behind the scenes, this ghost who took care of people's plants, clients out there bragging about their own green thumbs. She'd rather be a wildflower living free in some forest than be a  Hedyotis coriacea struggling to exist in a glass house. She'd rather be Oz than Dorothy. She'd rather be water than wine.  That's what she told herself, as she entered the back doors of million dollar mansions, enabling all those cropped fifty something blonds boasting about their African Violets. Nancy thought of herself like a soldier, when it came down to it.  The way she saw it, she inhabited a trench with a bunch of people who brought lollipops instead of AK47s. She couldn't leave them. What kind of a soldier would?

parenthood at the page station

On Fridays, we no longer venture from bar to bar, collecting people, unhinging people, stretching the night out until it is taut, ready to swell then ravel apart, until people empty the streets, leaking into their doorways vanishing the chatter, until the nightness fades into daywake. Until hangovers turn into eggs and coffee and what did I do last nights?

I worked with a man at the Public Library who told me I was a hypocrite if I was both married and an artist, which I was. He told me that all this comfort would do nothing for my art, which it has or hasn’t, who can say. He remained angry at me for the duration of our joined employment. Enraged, really. I’d forgotten all about him, until last night, when I bumped into another ex-co-worker (“Fred”), at the grocery store, in the suburbs, on a Friday night. Fred was exhausted with a new baby, exhausted and married.

Look at me, he said. I don’t sleep. I’m allergic to everything. Look how tired I am. My husband and I continued to walk slowly down the aisles with him, pretending we had planned this liaison, pretending we were out on a Friday night. Fred reminded me about the angry man at our last job, and reminded me that what made the angry man so toxic, was that we all worked in a very little room in back of the library together. A tiny little room with a half-door, the kind you imagine people have in small towns, where they greet their neighbors from the waist up, their procreating half, hidden from you, like a door burka.

Anyway, two or three of us had sat in this tiny office for 6-8 hour shifts, signing people in and out to the internet. The internet was still a relatively exciting and new creation, to us, and in our innocence, we were always shocked when we closed down the computers at the end of the night and found they were primarily used for pornography. Pornography and writing contests. It was the first time in my life that I really pondered the word fetish.

But that was a decade ago, when being an artist to me meant, having little understanding of why anyone would be anything else. Now, it seems quite obvious. Employment, childcare, dental.

Now, on Fridays, we are tired. My husband and I take a nice long walk before it gets dark. We used to wait to go out until it was dark, or find a dark bar before it got dark, in an effort to avoid any light, but now we worry about muggers. I ponder my wedding ring before we go out, not because I want to appear artist-like and single, but because the ring is not insured. We are so sleepy that when it begins to rain, we merely duck into a grocery store and window food shop. If it is pouring, he will remove his clogs and I, my flip-flops, and we will run home, catching our breath under awnings, cars passing with fog lights, deserting us to the rain.

Here is what I want to happen in the world. I want an old lady in a 72 beige Ford to pick us up, set towels on her seats, and drive us home, if it rains.
I want an old woman to walk out of her aging house, the houses I have noticed has begun its neglect, the house where the shutters are no longer painted in summer, where the rickety stairs become more rickety with each passing season,   where the old woman has blocked her front door with a giant ficus, because the door is broken...I want her to walk out of their house one day, see me smiling, and say "You seem like a nice person, would you like my house?" I imagine the fight I will have with her family. I imagine the logistics of the expensive annual taxes, which she will also leave to me in her will. She doesn’t want me to lose the house once I have it. She has considered every detail, which is so like her, so like her that her family will be wounded even deeper, unable to find any holes in her will. She thought of everything. And once she worked out the logistics of giving her house away, she then propped herself on her sunroom window seat, and waited for the right person to walk by. After I have finished thanking her, I tell her that I am a writer and that this is a great gift for a writer. I wonder if that is true. I wonder if my life has already been too easy, which is why I am not driven. I wonder if I will not just nest and die in there. I wonder if God wants me to work harder for my house, if Gods plan is not to hand me a house, midafternoon. I imagine how the grieving family would pick up all the antiques, looking down away from me when they come in, everyone feeling deserving of the house, everyone feeling undeserving of the house. It’s good, I think, that I am their common enemy. If there's no common enemy, they would only devour each other. I remember that from my own dealings with death. Their loathing of me, this outsider, makes them closer at this sad time.

Maybe, the nephew thinks, it is better the house went to this stranger. He thinks it's sad that she felt more connection to a stranger, a virtual lottery winner of the family house, borne from their neglect. He promises himself that he will not fail his own children that way. He prays his own children will not desert him, because that’s really what’s happened here, the young deserting the old, not the other way around. That part he can't control. He can only control his own distribution of love. The nephew makes a private deal with himself; if his children desert him, he will walk outside one day and pick a stranger to leave his house to. Then, the nephew worried that he has just set the curse into play. He remembers it is Friday. Death makes days such silly details. The nephew is so tired. He shouldn't make such deals with his fate on an empty stomach.

Clearly, I am destined for Greatness

Last night I bumped into Jennifer Anniston at the grocery store. Specifically at the check out counter. She had a chair pulled up to where the bagger should be. The bagger who is constantly inspired by customers to break into a Beatles song. Well, he wan't there, so no Yellow Submarine for me. But Jennifer Anniston was, donning one of those plunging albeit tasteful calvin Klein numbers.

The cashier was beeping my items and I looked up and saw Jennifer.
"Oh my god, Jennifer Anniston," I said. "I write about you in my blog."
She looked up at me disappointed, maybe more about everybody who thinks about her, not just me.
I said "Hey Jen," cause I'm a fixer. I said, "Hey Jen, if it bothers you, I can write about someone else." I said "Pick anyone else for me to write about."
She said "Why don't you write about the Queen of Sheeba?"
I said "Done. Tomorrow, I'll transpose your name with the Queen of Sheebas."
Now, dear audience, let me interject, in case you're not paying attention. ..Obviously, that was a dream. The real Jennifer Anniston was not actually available to me at the Jewel. But....I think that was a really important dream, with everything that's happening in the world, don't you readers? I mean, I'm really gettting down to the meat of world issues. I just feel really proud ot have those kinds of dreams, like God is speaking through me, and telling me "Amy, you're the great mind of the Me generation."