Red Corduroy Pants

In elementary school, I loved Lindsey Krebs in the way that second grade boys love hot rod model cars and Legos: compulsorily, as though zealous adoration were a classroom rule that if disobeyed, was punishable by the principal. Lindsey had the sort of curvaceous handwriting that made her seem more sophisticated than the average second grader. In fact, her lettering looked the way her name sounded: soft at first, zesty upon second glance. Lindsey did her capital “L’s” in cursive, big loops at the top and bottom. On rainy days, I would practice mimicking Lindsey’s handwriting on spare sheets of notebook paper or on the foggy bus windows during the ride home from school. It was on days like that – when droplets of water fell onto the pavement like stones – that I longed to jump into the loops of Lindey’s “L’s” and stay there until the sun came out again.

Lindsey was blonde, but not in the typical eight-year old blonde way: her mom did not make her wear her hair in French braids the way my mother did, and she never embellished her locks with a frilly ribbon. Lindsey’s golden hue had natural variation; the lighter strands of dandelion yellow looked the way all women who visit the hair salon monthly for a cut and color wish their hair would look naturally. The girl’s bangs swooped just below her eyebrows, and occasionally, she would brush them to the side with a few fingers. My bangs, trimmed on a regular basis by my mother, were cropped too short to get away with that sort of effortless little sweep.

Lindsey knew all the lyrics to the poodle skirt, petal-pushing songs in Grease before I even knew about the romance between Sandy and Danny. She got to be a flower-crowned May blossom girl in our school play about the months of the year, while I acted as the leprechaun representing March, jigging my way onstage. She was cool in the unconventional sense: she made the hand-me-down clothes from her older sisters look like nineties grunge or hippie chic, while I probably just resembled little orphan Annie in the outfits I inherited from my cousins. I was the typical “cat got your tongue?” little girl who was oftentimes too shy to do anything other than silently revere the cool kids, and because of that, Lindsey thought I was a snob. Once, her and my best friend Brittany Severe stayed in from recess to help the teacher assemble packets for class, and when I came in from swinging along the monkey bars outside, Lindsey came up to me and spoke for the two of them, and made a humiliating proclamation: “Me and Brittany decided we don’t want to be your friend because you’re mean and obnoxious.” I couldn’t believe it: Lindsey hardly knew me, and Brittany had been my best friend since kindergarten. True, I was reserved, but there was a part of me that loved making fun of people. Only to me, pointing out someone’s high waters or making a comment to boys about the obvious crushes girls had on them was gentle prodding, not invective. I guess no one else saw it that way, and as a second grader, simultaneously being pummeled by Lindsey Krebs, the free spirited goddess, and my long time playmate was worse than not understanding how to multiply numbers. I was confused, but determined to prove them wrong, and form some sort of triple alliance of girl power with them, even if they hated me.

Growing up, my mother was the type to make me help out around the house: there was always some piece of antique furniture that needed to be dusted, or some dishes that needed to be put away, or a table that needed to be set for dinner. Usually, doing them matched up with the sometimes timid and newly companionless aspect of my personality, and I would invent scenarios to make the tasks seem romantic: I could be an underappreciated servant girl like Sarah in A Little Princess who was secretly the richest girl in all her boarding school, or pretty Cinderalla doomed to wait on the big-feet of her stepsisters. It was during one of these ritualistic chores that I decided I was ready to confront my mom about something that had been lingering in my thoughts for weeks:

“Mom, I want a pair of red corduroy bellbottoms,” I said to my mother, not looking up from the potato I was peeling.

“Do you?” my mother said, raising her eyebrows, glancing up from her cutting board. “Why red?”

“Lindsey Krebs has a pair of red corduroy bellbottoms and I have to have some just like them,” I told my mother. To me, Lindsey was never just Lindsey; she was Lindsey Krebs or no one – you needed to hear the whole name to get the full effect.

“Well, okay, honey. How about you put that on your Christmas list?”

“Christmas is in December!” I said, putting down the potato peeler and facing my mother. If Lindsey disliked me, maybe looking like her would be the first step to being like her, and then she would have to undeniably embrace me.

“Yes, I know, dear – it’s in December every year,” my mother responded, emptying the carrots she had chopped into the frying pan.

I wanted to respond, but didn’t: I let the rhythmic peeling of the potatoes and the sound of my mother’s spatula raking against the frying pan speak for me.

“All right, then,” my mother sighed, wiping her hands on the thigh of her jeans. “I’m through with you. Thanks for gettin’ them ‘taters ready,” she added, trying to make me laugh.

I smiled in the same way I did when my father belted out opera songs about Willy, our redheaded golden retriever, in the car – the sort of smile I reserved for when I wasn’t sure whether or not I supposed to be chuckling. I didn’t know if Lindsey’s parents made up their own rhyming jingles, or if they could only buy her new clothes on holidays, but I could guess the answer.

Once a week, our second grade teacher at Relay made us write in our marble composition books. We were to respond to questions like, “What are you going to do this weekend?” and “Do you like winter?” and “What do you like to do best after school?” I didn’t mind answering any of these, but I always preferred it when we were assigned free writes; I liked inventing mystery stories that Scooby and Shaggy would have trouble cracking.

Usually, when I read the week’s journal question on the blackboard, I would tap the eraser on my pencil against the desk or dig at the initials written on the pencil’s ridges in black magic marker; this was my way of thinking. But there were occasional questions that required no premeditation at all: I knew the answer right away. “If you could wish for anything in the world, what would it be?” was one such question, one of those ones I knew as intimately as the archs and twists in Lindsey’s handwriting. I began scrawling with the dull point of my pencil; when I could beckon my words so easily, I couldn’t be bothered with trying to conceal my unsteady penmanship. I finished before the teacher asked us to stop, and passed the time tracing the eyelet flowers on my white pinafore, looking up every so often to see where Corey Beals was wiping his boogies and to notice the way Lindsey Krebs poked her tongue out the corner of her mouth when she was concentrating too hard.

When the teacher finally called the attention of the class, she asked someone to share what they had written. I raised my hand, arm darting up swiftly like an arrow aiming for the classroom ceiling, but the teacher called on Zach Falwright instead, who’s wish would be to have a room all to himself filled with Dr. Suess books so that he could read all day without listening to his little brother whine, and make up rhyming stories of his own. Elise Robbins was next, who said she wished that her father would stop packing peanut butter and jelly and sugar-free snack pack pudding everyday in her lunch. After each of them shared their stories, my arm instinctively bolted upwards, but the teacher was looking to call on those students who didn’t have their hands raised. Lindsey was her next victim: “Lindsey,” the teacher said. “Won’t you share your journal entry with the class?” The girl opened up her composition book, which was neon orange, not magenta, like mine – a tell tale sign of my overt girliness and aversion to all things sporty or action figure oriented or just plain boyish. Lindsey could play dodge ball with the lads or belt the lyrics to songs in movie musicals on the bleachers with us lassies; she was versatile and fit in with just about anyone.

“I can’t find my page,” said Lindsey, thumbing through the book. “Hang on.”

“Shall I come back to you, dear?”

“No,” Lindsey responded. “No – here it is; I found it.” She smoothed the page over with her hand, pushed some of those blonde locks behind her ear, and began. And there it was – Lindsey’s wish, out on the table, like an hors d’oeuvre for the whole class to sample: she wanted her family to be happy. I looked at Ms. Campbell, our teacher, who wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Eventually, she just said, “Lindsey, that’s wonderful.” I couldn’t believe it. It was worse than the time after school, when I was waiting for the bus to arrive, and my teacher asked, “You know who’s handwriting I love?” And when I asked who, expecting to hear my own name, I heard Lindsey Krebs’ instead.

“Does anyone else want to share?” the teacher asked the students. “Elizabeth – didn’t you have your hand up?”

“I changed my mind,” I said.

“You sure? Well then,” she began, before I could respond, “Are we ready to move onto Spelling? Corey, would you mind passing some lined-paper out to the class?”

As the boy rose, obeying his teacher’s request, I took the eraser of my pencil and began, word-by-word, eliminating what I had written in my journal. I wanted Lindsey Krebs to see, to know what my wish was, but I knew now that I could never let her know, and too, I knew that Lindsey Krebs and I would never be friends.

forget-me-not

For my birthday, my mother had the loose links to this lovely forget-me-not bracelet from WWII welded together by our trustworthy local jeweler. This piece belonged to my grandmother, and when my mother was a teenager, while perusing her mother's jewelry box, scouring for some hidden hand-me-down goodies, she came across these ornately engraved little pieces strung together on a piece of black ribbon. She asked her mom if she could keep the bracelet, fascinated by the names on each piece of metal, but apparently never further researched it or enquired about it, because she is unsure of who all the names belong to. What we do know, however, is that forget-me-not bracelets were a typical acquirement for women on the home front during the war, who had friends and lovers and family members leaving them behind to go fight overseas.

I couldn't have asked for a more thoughtful gift; the history alone is enough to keep me wearing it, yet another heirloom to wonder about. I'd like to someday find out who all the people on the links are - what sort of characters my grandmother was attempting to hold on to in the form of sterling metal linked around her wrist - something permanent and united in spite of the potential temporality of life in war.

Blossoming

Today, ah: the first glimmer of Spring and my twentieth birthday. James visited and we took a stroll around my historic hometown, and I for once let the gingerbread on porch railings and high peaked roofs fade into the background, and absorbed instead the inflorescence around me. I though of Wordsworth at Tintern Abbey, the scene a stamp on his memory:

  "...Once again
  Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,  
  That on a wild secluded scene impress
  Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
  The landscape with the quiet of the sky."                  

Do we not all love to watch flower petals cup their pollinated crux? Or notice the withered leaves, skeletal, turned to lace, thin as eggshells? And look overhead to the branches coiled like telephone lines, supporting wiry florets against the backdrop of human edifice?

Here are some of our findings from the day, photo credits mostly to my lovely James, and a few to myself. Hope everyone enjoyed the weather as much as we did. And yes, I had a lovely birthday (eh hem, I managed to hold back the tears this year...usually getting older and feeling alone makes for an all too tragic twenty-four hours.) I can't wait to share with everyone some of the wonderful goodies I've been so fortunate to receive. Updates on that in another post?

♥ Vintage Betty

For a Lover

Somewhere along the line, you unknowingly banned me from my phase of eclipses, that seemingly perpetual spell of darkening where illumination could find no refuge.

I never knew how difficult it would be to write about happiness, or how nearly unwilling I’d be to use that very noun. Even now, all of my instincts as a writer are reprimanding me for using such an abstract word in such an upfront way, are yelling that this sounds too much like the sort of elementary topic sentence that makes it impossible for a story to reveal itself piece by piece, shard by shard, one sliver at a time. But here I am, dodging my inclination to substitute “happiness” with some more ambiguous phrase: “seasonal contentedness” or “temporal satisfaction,” because in spite of my cynicism (or, perhaps, realism) for once, I want to at least make believe that I don’t think this is ephemeral.

I can’t help but to think of you as a montage – as instants formed, sort of like the strands of my own hair woven together in a thick fishtail braid. And so I espy us, collapsed on hills that I pretend are bluffs (because I am so very precarious, and often sidle away from you), wondering what the night clouds would look like if we still had imaginations, pretending we understand the world on a molecular level, and envisioning our bodies melting away into the soil, so that only our freckles and scars and pitted skin remained, forming the reflection of constellations in the sky overhead, like the Gemini twins – connected, consolidated. Or I see us on the floor of my room, you with all your external creativity, penning pictures on my palms, and me quietly wishing I knew how to do anything other than write. And then I remember you during sunsets on the river – you, artfully arranging plucked flower petals on my converged knee caps while stationed in a graveyard, and me knowing that we were mirrored echoes of one another, like the water and the sky before us. And when I can envision no longer, there you are, knocking on my door in the morning with a potpourri of my favorite fruits, or stumbling into my bed during the aurora after a meteor shower, or gifting me poetry anthologies with titles like, How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love. (And ah, we don’t – forever wide-eyed and dreamless.)

We stumbled so suddenly (together), and your hands grasped me apace, before I became a shell in the ocean, seemingly burrowed deep within the sand and invulnerable to waves, but instead instantaneously drowned in the waters, adrift somewhere in that blue-green cavern. You walked me home in the rain on the night we met, and dried me off in your bed with the wind from your whispers, and I know that event to be a sentient metaphor, for although I am happy, I so often make a revolution and return to dreariness, but you are indefatigable, and are there to absorb even my most tempestuous deluges.

I am not Dante or Petrarch or any of the other great Italian poets, and I cannot compose love sonnets to slip under your doorway or in the pockets of your jacket, but know that my heart will always beat in iambs for you, with you. I am, I am, I am, it sounds, (in love with you.)

Bathing Beauty

Today I walked down by the shore of the bay - that yoke of sand and undulating, tepid water - allowing my feet and eyes to palpate those smooth stones that burrow right along the coastline. Of course, I imagined myself as Martha again, that reticent poet the Lieutenant so loves in The Things They Carried. I picked up coral, kernel-sized rocks and purple pebbles and even a seamless, featureless white stone that reminded me of the one so longingly described in the novel. Somehow, the beach has a way of making me think about everything and absolutely nothing all at once, like scrawling out vast catalogues (with a new number on each list for every grain of salt and sand riveted to my limbs), only to tear off the paper from the notepad and toss it aside in favor of an unmarked page. I thought about James and war and how I can't write anymore, and about my father backpacking out west in lieu of college, and about how I need to stop wishing I were more tragic - some sort of doleful, misplaced doe living in those grassy sectors that are all too close to highway medians. To unbutton my own skin a little, I stationed my towel near the dunes, where I could canoodle with the sun, nuzzled my feet into the sand and let fistfuls of it sift through my hands like funnels, and imagined that I really were living in the forties, which isn't hard to do on a secluded beach in a vintage-inspired bikini. I let myself assemble a Bathing Beauty wish-list: all the thises and thats I want to have to be a more genuine swimsuit clad lady of the past. Thought I'd share all those coveted items:

1) An embellished bathing cap, to keep my pin curls in place. In the forties and even later, women essentially never ventured into the water without neatly tucking their labored-over locks into a floral (or otherwise) decorated swimming cap.

2) A pretty lace or paper parasol to keep my complexion looking nicely browned, rather than horribly roasted.

3) Back issues of magazines published in the forties to peruse while lounging on the beach. Nothing like a little inspiration from the glamour girls of the bygone days.

4) A wide-brimmed, straw hat for mid-day beach strolls.

And of course, some accessories I already own that no bathing beauty should be without:

1) Impractical pumps to keep those legs looking long and lean.

2) Fresh or silk flowers or some alternative hair accessory to keep you looking finished and well polished.

3) A vintage handkerchief to dab our faces with in order to fool men into thinking us dames never sweat.

4) And of course, we mustn't ever forget our red lipstick; if, in the forties, women in the military were expected to demonstrate their femininity in spite of their service with stained lips, then certainly, the bayside was no place to be without makeup!

Now, please, all, get to the beach before the summer, too, is bygone!

Braiding

Precursor:

It's not that I haven't been trying to write lately; I have. Maybe the plodding pace of the summer has left me feeling a little lackadaisical when it comes to, well, just about everything, but I've picked up the ole' journal from time to time nevertheless. Anyhow, it seem that regardless, I haven't yet composed anything of real substance this summer, but I've realized this past weekend that my lull in inspiration does not have to equal a lull in posts. Point is, I've been having some computer problems of late, which has motivated me to go through all of my documents and back files up, and in doing so, I stumbled across many, many pieces that I had forgotten about entirely. It's interesting, sifting through all this work from high school, appreciating them in a whole new way (back then, I found a way to loath everything that was inked onto paper from my imagination.) Here's something I wrote in my senior year, when we were studying forms of non-fiction; it's called a beaded essay, because it takes a cluster of ideas and strings them together in a unifying way (as one would in creating a necklace.) I suppose because of this it may feel a little disjointed, but hopefully some sense can be made of it! Here goes:

Braiding

The heirlooms that linger in my space, in my home, are enigmatic, cryptic: they are sphinxes.

The first time I saw them, I was eight or nine, maybe younger. They were like two spokes on the wheels of my bicycle, only healthier in their thickness. Even then, I could tell they were woven by the hands of a basket maker – the three entities of my grandmother’s hair folded into one, three separate strands unified in braids. Such a curious finding to stumble upon; the memory of a lost desire to join the convent. I wondered for many hours, for many days, I wondered about what changed her mind, noting differences between the hair on my own head and her severed hair: both dead, both dull in their tone. The preparation of mind it must take to part with long locks; I can imagine her in front of a vanity wearing clam diggers and saddle shoes, leg shaking like a jitterbug, eyes watching the scissors as though they were ready to start dancing. And I can picture her carefully parting her hair on the top of her scalp and down the back, and then braiding the two sections in the slow, steady rhythm of a waltz. She would cut them away quickly, without lingering, and be left with blunt ends, with no hair to hide behind. I never found out what stopped her from becoming a nun, never got the real answer, only the fantasies: “She met your grandfather and that was the end of it,” my father told me. “No,” my mother said, rolling her eyes like windmills. “That isn’t it.”

It was the typical tourist’s souvenir, the inexpensive take-me-home. A small wooden box with black varnish and doll sized hinges, mother-of-pearl inlay and a depiction of a Japanese tree on top. But the miniature chest did not come home to America empty – it came carrying war – the civilians, the scenery, the expansive ships of the navy, and hollowness. (My grandfather came back with hollowed out cheekbones and a hollowed out soul – the war had stiffened him.) This is how I imagine his homecoming to have played out: he steps over the threshold, present in hand, luggage slung over a shoulder, to nothing. No wife, no children – all had left, careening him back to the wide swaths of foamy sea again, only the depth of blue and mysteriousness of what was under the surface visible. There was a note, that’s all – a small scrap of goodbye – though its contents, its excuses, its explanations, remain unknown to me.

That house was filled with the past and the future was all that was ahead; he plowed forward, trying to fill the chest, trying to develop new memories, finding a new wife, a faithful one; finding my grandmother. Her parents bought the house, kissing their farewells to Baltimore City and welcoming the suburbs. It was the model house: simple, brick, wood floors, three bedrooms and a cave of a basement. And that house was passed down to my grandparents, then to my brother, and filled with innumerable uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, filled with Sicilians smoking, baking, laughing, praying the rosary, downing wine, and living.

Visiting my brother is like living in a photo album. Visiting my brother is like being in grade school again. The décor has changed since the holidays and weekdays I spent visiting my grandparents, watching television specials and eating potfuls of macaroni and cheese. The carpet has been ripped up to expose the flooring the house was born with, the colors of the walls more muted, the stairwell no longer lined with framed photographs, the old furniture traded for newer pieces. Without the velveteen couch and the knickknacks strewn throughout the rooms, I can see it better now for what it is. I can appreciate the arcs in the doorways and the old-fashioned marble tile in the upstairs bathroom, both circular patterns, as in never-ending, as in everything ultimately comes back to meet. Circular like the heirlooms I own: never really mine, and yet somehow a part of me. I have always been captivated by these objects: their stories so unexplainable, their past sitting idle, waiting to be invented. Their history lies in my hands, in my heart.

La Moda

Let me lay down the ole cliche: new blog, new beginning.  I've decided to intersperse my usual musings (which generally take the form of personal essays and experimental fictions) with something yet untried: fashion.  So in between my writings, look out for photographs of yours truly and all her style inspirations.  Before you're compelled to condemn my vanity, though, let me enumerate a few of the reasons I've decided to take this leap.  

1) There was a span of time this past year where I was downright content slapping on my "Free Tibet" tee shirt, worn out jeans, a gaudy necklace, and my trusted beat-up cowboy boots.  We all have our moments of lounging, I'll acknowledge, but my ultimate hope is that with the desire to blog, I'll simultaneously find myself developing a desire to avoid haphazard wardrobe choices.  Be warned that you'll most likely be taking a gander at an overload of vintage inspired outfits, because I see this blog as a means of fueling (or perhaps curbing?) my obsession with the days of yore. 

(Note: Yes, God, I realize how utterly frivolous this sounds, but a girl has to avoid unalloyed seriousness, right?  Right.)

2) In my own obsessive fashion blog following, I've come to appreciate the careful attention so many fashionistas out there put into the layout of their photo displays.  As I see it, this gives me an adequate excuse to play with the overpriced Adobe software my father spontaneously decided to buy for me while I was still in high school.  Bear with me through all of this, though, as I'm still learning.  I designed the header for this page tonight, and in its original form, it's all cremes and lilacs and sepia-toned colors, but for some reason, when I uploaded it to Blogger, it turned blue and pink.  I'll try fiddling with that again at a later date. 

3) For the longest time, people have asked me, "Where do you get your clothes?"  Well, ladies and gents, now is your time to find out, I suppose.  You'll see that I shop almost anywhere affordable (my attic, consignment shops, and H&M, to name a few.)  Growing up around a thrifty mother who seemed to be sewing constantly, I learned early on what well-made clothes look and feel like, and that they can be found in places other than high end boutiques and expensive department stores.  To me, it's less about individual pieces and more about assembling a head-to-toe, cohesive mien.  

And there you have it.  Currently working on a new essay, so be sure to check back soon.  In the meantime, I've reposted some of the more recent entries from my old livejournal.  Gotta have a little bit of history!

♥ Vintage Betty