Miriam Feder

On most days, energy squeezes from my hip sockets and my shoulder blades push me through. I’m gregarious, straightforward, my hail-fellow-well-met veneer mostly sticking onto my timid base layer. When that timid base starts to swell, “reflective” swings over to “uncertain.” Doubt repeats on me like Aunt Mae’s stuffed bell peppers. I might be pulsing along, in my new found skin when it catches me. “Why do you sit at home, writing this shit? Why aren’t you going to street fairs or raising dahlias or riding a mountain bike to the top of the world, around the lake and home again? That’s fun. This? This is nothing. You know, you never did learn French.”

True, we all need a push sometimes, but not doubt, thank you. Most times, I’m comfortable here at home, with and without my friends. I do whatever seems to be most important to me, even the laundry. Shit—that’s pathetic—but I’m getting used to it.

You see, I’m no longer young enough to try everything, but I’m old enough to try anything. I’m probably allergic to knitting, mysteries, gardening and organized fun. I’m too old and too young for some things anymore: too old to pretend I like those things I really don’t; too young to stop trying new things, even if they might not work for me.

It’s a devilment of opposites. I long for structure and I love spontaneity. I’ve no need to be boxed in, but I build boxes faster than I know what to do with them. Anything and nothing goes—me, them, it, elsewhere and likewise. It’s art versus laundry—sure that’s an old and easy battle. But now it’s also art in laundry, and hell, just laundry. It’s my joy, my fantasy, my passion. And when the worm unwinds, it’s my loneliness.

The fretful details—the small steps that build all the Romes—send me running, fearful of cog-dom and futility, threatened by brittleness and loneliness. The details might want hours, days even. They might seize control and swallow up all my time and creative bandwidth. “Tidy up, pay the bills, read the mail.” Some do these things well, with graceful routines that leave time for brandy and laughter. Some avoid them altogether. I desire both and do neither. When I finally turn to the ledger and account them their due, that’s when I notice false, brittle orderliness. Then that corner slips away to avalanche.

Of course it’s all perspective. The very grandest matters are just a series of small tasks that take attention, routine, method. Great thoughts and dreams require accounting and attention to detail. But when this starts to feel like a cog-in-the-works process, I sigh out precursor-despair. Tasks may be delicious, with their well-crossed lists. They may offer a place to hide. But whether I’ve embraced them as a hiding place or as tasks well-done, the insularity of small matters whimpers with interstitial loneliness. “Can’t he kiss away the fearsome details?” Instead, the powder cloud swirls around me and I’m lost in it.

Someday they’ll find me out, those people who never knew to wonder, but suddenly do because they saw the feature expose. They had been busy grilling wienies and tossing softballs, riding their mountain bikes and digging their dahlias. They kayaked, spoke French and made love—or thought they did. They sang “Jesus, Hallelujah” and crocheted potholders, never giving me a thought, I know. But now, they’re a little curious. “Who does that?” they wonder, in that distract-able moment of our collective ADD.

They didn’t understand why I sat at home, quietly minding my own business or why I looked wildly for my own business, again and again, in the comfort and newness of my middle-ages. They didn’t need to ponder why I had dressers with someone else’s crap still in them.

Who will reveal me? The hungry writer, hunting down one of those delicious stories of the weird—I mean everyman–crawling brilliantly through the wormhole of obscurity? Or is it the archeologist coming to rescue me from the avalanche of loneliness in small matters.

And who will cover my ass? Frazzle, you little devil. Finding, minding, listing, insisting. I love you; now why can’t we just get along?

You and your obsessions, compulsions and fears—you keep me working and reworking it to death sometimes, chaining me to the computer screen just so you’ll know I’m hard at it. You’ve got me grinding away, afraid I’ll lose my nerve, my reserve, you fearful, frantic Frazzle.

You think I might just get lost in a sea of chocolate, red wine and New Yorker articles, a lazy day in bed, a gad about town. I bet you worry I’ll polish up my passport and forget to come home. You’re so jealous of all the things I might decide to do, sometimes you won’t even let me put away the dishes. Do you think I’ll be seduced by the dishwasher just to avoid writing? But that’s how it is with you, Frazzle. You control freak.

I know you mean well. You get the bills paid and help me find the desk beneath the rubble. You sort and stack little pots of this and that, all fluffed and alphabetized: get well; happy birthday; be on-time; connect the dots. You’ve got my backseat ready for anything that could arise today and then the next. Sometimes, my calendar jumps a whole week, I’m so damn prepared.
Thanks for your order-from-chaos, the full plate of work, a comprehensible accounting system. I do need you; I am thankful for the tasks you push me through.

And now Frazzle, having accorded you something of your due and thinking kindly on you, could I ask your favor in return? Please, lighten up. Let me slow, slip, tumble and squeak along the normal pleasures of the day, breathing a bit of air. Yes, I will respect you—dare I say expect you—in the morning. You’ll be waiting for me at four a.m.—the anxiety hour. But just now, let’s have us another glass of wine, why don’t we.

We always have a wonderful teaser about this time of year. The rains will be back. But the early burst of sun is too good, too intoxicating for us to be practical. We Northwesterners just have to throw ourselves at it. My little homage:

Sunshine pulls energy from my fingertips and hair roots like an insistent partner dragging the shy girl out of the shadows. Old kinks fall from my back—new one’s don’t even notice their beginnings as my body twists and turns with the rhythm of the dapples dancing on streaks and patches of light.

Bulky clothes fall away and skin shyly floats to the surface. “Touch me, touch me” it calls to the glorious columns of light—shocked at it’s own boldness. Legs, ribs, skull long for the steam to be released from rain-soaked bones, Away wooly layers, layers due for cleaning, for boxes, for the thrift store and the wooden trunk. It’s time to bare thoughts, limbs and hair and forget gooseflesh. This is the beginning of spring.

I studied which sweater you’d like,
what’s for breakfast, when to ask and not.
Important lessons never right enough.
I was eliminated from the next round.

You’re filled too, if you paid attention.
Note: Ritter chocolate, Asiatic lilies.
Should we discard streaky windows
or recycle them for a new heart?

I studied which sweater you’d like,
what’s for breakfast, when to ask and not.

Pity the next ones stirring rubble.
I’m tired and despairing of a whole-heart love.
Who would sort my scabs and scars?
Could I open bones filled with secrets?

All that energy scibbered away.
It sprung me: toss it in or let it out?
Maybe I could have spent it better
making something to hold onto…a nice pot.

I studied which sweater you’d like,
what’s for breakfast, when to ask and not.

Opportunity—what about those misses.
Don’t say “each love is a classroom …
You’ll get there when you’re ready.”
Whatever could that look like?

Love—soured, spat out and washed away,
beats safety, footing and progress.
Messy windows, crusty scabs, fossil-habits
stumble broken hearts along.

I studied which sweater you’d like.

In my early travels I saw people cook smelly things in woks on the street. I would ask “what is it?” “again…please,” a third time… Now I was embarrassed and I still didn’t have a clue what he said. My rule became: if it’s very hot; buy it; bite it; and if you don’t like it—toss it. If it’s good who care what it was? Eat more.

I had endeared myself to my father by being willing to eat anything–pickled herring at one month. Either I didn’t mind smelly things and weird textures, or I had a sunny disposition and strong desire to please. Of course I was delighted when my father shook with a belly laugh.

A picky eater wouldn’t have stood a chance in my house. The worst scorn and judgment would have been flung her way. I carefully carved out the two things I really didn’t want to eat that I thought I could get away with–mushrooms and asparagus. I ate everything else I ran into–even scary calamari tentacles. Surprise! my Mother suspended her own quick judgment and helped me out on the mushrooms—“she’s probably allergic to them anyway.” My Father never accepted these small phobias and made each restatement a small terror. “What— you don’t eat mushrooms?”

Girlfriends who asked my Mother what was for lunch or dinner received powerful disapproval. Linda was known for only eating Juniorette noodles. In anticipation of her lunch visit, my Mother, a non-driver, knocked the tail light off the ’59 Imperial. Look at this old boat on-line if you what to see what a disaster this must have been. Those expensive noodles were the punch-line of many a commentary. Juniorettes referred to Linda’s entire family. She was not invited again.

Food was love. And it occurred by my Mother’s rules, tastes and family history. When I came home from college, grad school, life—anything I might once have liked would be trotted out at every opportunity. I realized my home was one continuous meal.

Mostly I came home to blitzes: generous pillows of slightly sweetened ricotta cheese wrapped skillfully in buttery-fried crepes, topped with sour cream and cinnamon sugar. My Mother hasn’t been able to make a blintz for years. But if food is love, blintzes are an orgy—one that paradoxically demands monogamy. Eating frozen blintzes would be a very tacky affaire.

Many of my friends “discovered” real food in their 20s and 30s. I’ve shunned their studied, foody-ness and recipe servitude. I know that baby boomers—despite their uber-remodeled kitchens and gourmet devotionals— were usually raised on canned vegetables. Well-off families ate frozen, but for some reason fresh eluded most tables in this fertile country of truck farms. Fresh and crisp–rarer still. My college roomies were terrified of the pans full of Velveeta free stir-fried veggies I cooked from produce grown not ten miles away.

Eating is a sensual, earthy experience that supports life. Not an effete substitute for interaction, nor an excuse for obsession. Like most things, when it gets precious it becomes a pain in the ass.

Not that there isn’t something to be learned from a recipe. My scorn is part defense—I’ll admit. I can’t really stick to a recipe. I always have a creative addition, a lazy substitution. Most of my cooking is from the hip. It surprises me how much I absorbed from not paying attention to Mom. Marinate…. Marinate… Repetition would often help these little experiments develop into jewels, but it seems too….repetitive. Make it again? But….this time lets try…

It’s hard to truly incorporate foods and pots I didn’t grow up with. I understand Mom’s defaults. I have tackled eggplants. They seduce me in the grocery store, with their luscious purple gowns, but I know they never wandered into my grandmother’s kitchen. Yes I do Tofu. But unstudied, it drifts away from my thoughts. In the last two years I’ve added tempeh. It’s a good vehicle for sauces.

It’s a precious time, these days. But a table full of food is still the easiest way to show love, generosity and welcome.