Housekeeping
One of the failed New Year’s resolutions from last year was clearing out the back bedroom of the duplex.Cleaning the Stygean stables is a snap compared to this.
When I moved here 6 looooooooooooong years ago, I promised myself that nothing was going into the basement until I had evaluated it and thrown out what needed to be thrown out. Until then it went into the back bedroom, and I gently closed the door behind it. Then Chris arrived with his stuff, and it was thrown on top of the existing stuff. Then the tv with no remote was moved in there, a few bikes, a couple of window air conditioner units… The only recognizable order in the room are two books shelves with books in some semblance of order. Even those are a long way from in perfect order.
For the last few weeks, we’ve been hauling stuff to the Salvation Army, boxes of books to the library. And you can’t tell.
Tonight, though, is memory lane night. Chris is working until 8, so I dove in and withdrew a random box full of books and photo albums. Some of which made me go “Oh lord, he HAS to see this”. Some of them made me laugh as I bundled the books up from the library. I have Susan Faludi’s “Backlash” back when I was trying to be a feminist, but just wasn’t angry enough to actually read the book. Then there’s the wreath-making book from my first pass at domesticity. And if that wasn’t enough to make me happy I married the guy I married, the pictures from the last futile New Year spent with the ex boyfriend type. Wow, what a miserable time. We’d broken up, essentially, two months before. But I couldn’t face a New Year’s alone. At least I think that’s why I flew to Milwaukee, the coldest freakin’ place on earth, to spend a horribly awkward holiday. We won’t even talk about the last visit I made to Milwaukee (on company training program) at which time I met his future wife. Anyway, lots of pictures of strangers at a party we went to for New Year’s. There’s Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso from one of my many self improvement stages. There’s the photo album from 6-8th grade years with pictures of my brother as a wee tyke sitting with super fluffy Captain, the papered, but not showable, schnauzer. Already in those photos, Cappy looks like a rumbled old man in pajamas. Then the next photo album had pictures of my flag football team, which almost brought a tear to my eye. I miss those guys so much! Until I flipped the page and there is the massively ugly bruise on my leg from where a teammate stepped on my leg just above the ankle while we were both chasing the quarterback. I repelled many a potential teammate by whipping out that particular photo. Back in the good old days when it didn’t occur to me to have it looked at. I guess I was more of a man then.
Finally, though, I was so happy to find Maya Angelou’s book “And Still I Rise”. I’ve always loved her poem “Phenomenal Woman” which starts:
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my step
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
I just like that spirit of “I’m not perfect. I'm awesome.” One day I’ll have that confidence!
And now it’s time to come back to the present, and whip up some dinner. It was a fun trip to the past, but I have to admit the present is really sunshiny bright. There's no where, and no when, else I'd rather be.
posted by MyHusbandRules @ 8:27 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home