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It’s not that there’s nothing to write about.

And how do I begin to describe it?

The hurry, the noise, the talking, the people.  So many people to write about:  teenager, father, grandmother, child; how they all topple and spill and swirl into each other.  How time spins like a top, and only by squinting hard and willing myself to focus on just one shape–the blue hexagon, for example–can I almost, almost identify it each time it whips around.  A determined trick of the eye to pull constancy out of chaos; that’s what writing is for me.  And lately, the top has been spinning so hard and so fast, I’ve surrendered to the chaos.  I’ve given up trying to find the blue hexagon, and instead only try to make some sense of the spinning blur.

I could write a lengthy assessment of our recent family life, our busy-busy-busyness of work and school and music and sports and church.  But how would that interest you?  I will not (and cannot) detail the minutiae of those singular events, but I can try to explain what happened above and below and around them.  I can try to explain the blur.

I could tell you how the red leaves and nubby gravel crunched under my wheels as I drove to the outskirts of town for my daughter’s piano lesson, where her shy attempt at Clair de Lune washed over me with such wistfulness, I could almost put a hand on the back of my fifteen-year old self, sitting up straight, punching down nervous keys for a silent, listening teacher.

leaf

It is fall.  Why do piano lessons go so well with fall?

Or I could describe how the polyester volleyball jersey draped over my thirteen-year old’s narrow shoulders as she pounded her new overhand serve, and how the squeak of the bleachers and smell of the waxy gym floor mercilessly pulled my junior high days—which were funny and awful and typical—up from the forgotten well in which I’d thrown them down so many years ago.

I could write about yesterday’s twilight bike ride with my boy; how he dared me to coast with my feet off the pedals, how the scent of burning leaves and glimmer of streetlights brought me back to neighborhood gangs and my mom’s spaghetti and pedaling fast to make it home for The A-Team on a warm and cloudy Tuesday night.

It is fall.  Why do memories go so well with fall?

And I could try, I suppose, to write about the three-tiered October sky that met us on the highway as we drove home from that volleyball game:  periwinkle-on-sapphire-on-indigo, stretched before the tawny sagebrush in a soft striped canvas, a pale circle of moon punching through it like a fine pearl earring.  It was a sunset of summer’s end; a sunset slowly losing her heedless blond to that of a richer, darker hue.  I could write about how that sunset, cast like a telling backdrop against our madly spinning lives, made me feel.

But how do I say what I mean?

I can only say that I peered through the windshield to take it all in, but just when I was getting close—just when I thought I had it—I had to grip the wheel and look back down the road; I had to focus on the tasks at hand.  Carpool, dinner, homework, bedtime—the stuff of our days, the stuff of our lives.  The stuff that keeps me blessedly distracted from really understanding that sky, from absorbing the full weight of Change.

Why do memories go so well with fall?

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Posted on by jsmith

Rodeo Drive

I spent today walking up and down and through Rodeo Drive.  It was fun.  And funny.

Fun because it was a bright, beautiful day in Beverly Hills and no matter who you are or how aloof you try to be, no one can resist the unbridled materialism and giddy optimism of southern California.

 Funny because, unlike most shopping venues that reflect the taste (and income level) of their patrons, the shops on Rodeo Drive seem to thrive by selling a look and lifestyle diametrically opposite to that of its customers.  Chanel and Prada may peek through those pretty store windows, but tank tops and cutoff jeans are what’s staring back.  After my day of people watching, I was surprised (and comforted, I won’t lie) that the premiere fashion district of our wealthy nation doesn’t seem to draw, um, wealthier people.  Or at least better looking people.   (Myself included.)

Look, I get it:  Rodeo Drive is more of a tourist attraction than anything, which is why tourists come in vacay garb like stretch pants and visors (though I was in capris and a tee, thankyouverymuch.)  Wecome to see the fantasyland that’s been constructed out of glass and chrome, silk and leather.  And even more alluring than this glittering world of nouveau riche is the idea that we, via our conspicuous consumption, somehow deserve a place in it.

The sumptuous dressing rooms, the gorgeously indifferent mannequins, the hedonistic prices—all convince us, initially, that holding court here is a privilege reserved for the elite.  So imagine our delight when the manicured sales staff graciously accepts our presence and—lo and behold!—our credit card?  Finally, we’ve been invited to sit at the Cool Table.  I left each shop a little disillusioned, though, because really:  would you want to belong to a club that would admit you as a member?  The prestige of shopping in a Fancy Store is a little deflated when everyone in line looks like they’re on their way to the county fair.  I found myself wondering why, if we can all afford such expensive clothes, we aren’t we wearing any of them?  Because if you’re not going to wear your nice clothes while shopping on Rodeo Drive, where are you gonna wear them?  (And please don’t say the county fair.)

My conclusion?  None of us really has a place to wear those Jimmy Choos, but we certainly share a purpose in buying them:  it gains us temporary admission into a world more glamorous than than our own.  It’s also called escapism, and the whole thing’s a little Vegas-y to me; average people throwing their money down to be someone else for a little while.  It’s not necessarily a fatal thing.  Just an expensive one.

Now lest I’ve gotten too heavy-handed in this post, rest assured:  I like clothes, and I like money.  Strolling down the the “Golden Triangle” of Beverly Hills, I realized that though I had little interest in purchasing that splendid clothing, I was supremely happy it was there.  I enjoyed the merry buzz it created among the shoppers, I enjoyed watching them fawn and gawk over it all (awkward as the fawning and gawking may have been), and I enjoyed the thread of commonality it seemed to weave among us all.  (Money!  Shopping!  Capitalism!  We were practically cheering it in silent unison.)  I enjoyed seeing the handiwork of artistic fashionistas, I enjoyed the visceral euphoria in the air.  I enjoyed inhabiting, for a little while, a world more glamorous than my own.  (Think Julia Roberts but with shorter legs, shorter hair, covered hindquarters and no blank check.  That was me today.)

Rodeo drive is fun, and funny, and just a little bit tacky—as are we all.  So I say:  embrace the tackiness.  Just don’t spend too much money on it, dahling.  Vegas is waiting.

p.s.  There is one exception to the tinsel found on Rodeo Drive, and that is Tiffany & Co.  Not one piece of jewelry in Tiffany’s was garish or gaudy, only pretty and bright and sparkly and did I mention pretty?  Today I decided that I heart Tiffany’s diamonds.

(Are you reading this, Derrick?)

Rodeo drive is just a little bit tacky, and I say:  embrace it.

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Posted on by jsmith

When your little sister wears perfume, don’t tell her she stinks

It was 1985.  I was twelve years old and dripping with the anticipation of attending my first real dance.  Our church’s youth group, which hosted weekly dances for teens aged fourteen to eighteen, had given a rare invitation to the twelve- and thirteen-year olds to join in the fun for one night.  One magical, moonlit night—I envisioned it spent twirling in the arms of a high school guy (not boy) draped in an oversized poly-knit sweater and a hefty dose of Drakkar.  Oh, the thrill of it all!

Sure, the dance was being held on a Wednesday from 7-8:30 pm.  Sure, it was taking place in a small, linoleum lined room just off the church kitchen, which would be well-lit and swarming with watchful adults.  Sure, a ghetto-blaster (can I still call it that?) would be passed off as the DJ.  No matter.  I saw this initiation into the world my older brother and sister had long inhabited as a turning point in my desperately linear march from tween to teen.  Along with my first real bra and the sky-blue stirrup pants my mom had sewn me, dancing with high schoolers was, in my mind, a rite of prepubescent passage from which there was no undoing.

Sure, they were just the boys from my church.  Sure, I’d seen most of them in their Boy Scout shirts on Wednesday nights, complete with neckerchief and slider belt.  Sure, most of them weighed less than I did.  No matter.  Regardless of who was wearing it, I was determined to brush my cheek against someone’s (anyone’s) poly-knit sweater and take a deep sniff of the masculinity-in-a-bottle that was Drakkar.  Of the numerous things about boys that enchant young girls, nothing compares to the kryptonite of cologne; it is a knee-weakening agent of the most intoxicating order.  We’d have gotten drunk off it, had we been allowed to get drunk.  And it was this very rapture over all things eau de toilette that got me into trouble that night.

See, when it came to my sixth-grade love life, I’d always tried to put myself into the other person’s shoes, treating them as I would want to be treated.  Like the time I got my crush a big, purple ribboned basket full of pretty treats (I know I would have loved it), or when I called my (other) crush several times each day, certain he would enjoy the attention as much as I would have, had he called me as often.  (He hadn’t.  Shocker.)  And the fact that this do-unto-others approach hadn’t born the exact fruit I’d hoped for didn’t deter me now; I was determined to apply the same logic to My Big Night.  I reasoned that if I enjoyed smelling cologne on my dance partner, he would surely enjoy smelling perfume on me.  And if a little perfume was good, a lot was better.  A lot.

So early Wednesday evening, after my algebra was done, my perm Aqua-Netted and my lips Bonne Belled, I performed the final, crowning hose-down:  an ample supply of Love’s Baby Soft.  This, my friends, was the perfume of the ages; it smelled heavily of baby powder with a kind of synthetic-floralish undertone, and it was enough to make boys beg you to Bear Hug.  (Even though we weren’t allowed to bear hug in the church.  But a girl could dream.)  I had received a pink encased Value Pak of Baby Soft for Christmas that year with perfume on one side, talcum powder on the other.  The perfume was a bubble gum pink color that showed through a clear plastic bottle with red hearts painted on it.  It was divine, and I couldn’t wait to seduce my first hapless suitor.

I generously covered my pre-dressed body, post-dressed body, clothes (yes) and hair with the diaper/flower scent, followed by an extra application to the pressure points I’d read about in Seventeen:  wrist pulse, neck pulse, interior of elbows, behind the ears and, of course, behind the knees.  (Who knew where the evening might lead?)  Let the games, I thought, as I sprayed and powdered and puffed, begin.

After a final mirror check/pulse-point sniff, I grabbed my lavender leatherette purse and bounced out to the Buick where my sixteen-year old brother and fourteen-year old sister waited for me.  I hopped in the back, wisely foregoing my standard “shotgun!” as I knew my mere admission into this vehicle was, tonight, a fragile privilege.  I sat down, slammed the door excitedly, and settled in the backseat as we pulled out of the driveway.  We had gone all of one block when my normally easygoing brother turned around in a sudden, inexplicable fury.

“WHAT is that smell?  Jen, is that you?”

“Um.  What?”

“Holy crap!  How much perfume are you wearing?”

“Um…what?  Not that much…”  My voice was small.  He was still glaring at me over the seat but I doggedly avoided eye contact.

“YOU REEK TO HIGH HEAVEN!”  Such words from big brother!  He groaned loudly and rolled down the window.  “Roll yours down too.”  (This was pre-auto windows.)  “I can hardly breathe!  What are you thinking?”

I was silent.  And then, with the raging hormones of a sixteen-year old boy trapped in his dad’s car, driving his two little sisters to a church dance, he dealt the final blow:

“If I was a guy dancing with you, I’d turn around and leave so fast…”

That was all it took.  Though I still refused to dignify him with a response, the minute I entered the church I ran to the ladies room and spent the first two (slow!) songs trying desperately to undo what I’d done.  I ran a paper towel under the faucet, wrung it out, and scrubbed every exposed pulse point. (The backs of my knees, swathed in the sky-blue stirrups, were unavailable.)  I even lathered some hand soap on my wet palms and attempted a mini sponge bath, but to no avail.  Turned out that getting perfume off one’s skin was much trickier than getting it on.

But I am proud to say that that same twelve-year old skin–now stinking of both Baby Soft and wet paper towel–remained admirably thick.  Hmph.  I wasn’t about to let my bossy older brother bring me down.  After all, what did he know about boys that Seventeen couldn’t teach me?

Before leaving the bathroom I took a deep breath, did a final pulse-point sniff (I settled on potent-but-irresistible) and marched my stirrupped legs right past the kitchen into the “dance hall.”  Bright lights, Careless Whisper, and numerous guys in sweaters greeted me.  This was my night, and I was gonna own it.  I scanned the scene, spotted a conspicuously attractive cable-knit, and locked in on my prey.  Following the inebriating scent of Drakkar, I could only wonder at my brother’s uncharacteristic outburst in the car.  Poor guy.  What did he know about love?  Because, really:

who wouldn’t want to get with this?

 

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p.s.  I had lavender corduroys to go with that lavender sweater vest, both of which I insisted on wearing the first day of school, even though it was ninety-seven degrees out.