Kelly Garriott Waite's Blog, page 6

Great 365 Day Purge - Day 2

Day Two of "The Great 365 Day Purge of 2014".

Today, I decided to toss all of the papers I'd saved from college, tucked away in the steamer trunk my father made me years ago. These papers range in length from ten to a hundred pages, those larger papers, of course, heavily padded with tables and graphs, and filled with the awkward, pompous, overly-intellectual use of "one" rather than "I".

One paper explores the possibility of exporting an Ohio-made product to Canada. Another, the potential economic development of a nation in which I conclude, "what remains to be seen is whether this nation's people are willing to take the necessary steps towards industrialization." My "marketing awareness journal" reminded me of the time when I wanted to be in advertising, writing jingles to convince people to buy the products I was pushing. But even then, I must have felt some tug of my future self, a self that knew that to promote a lifestyle of purchasing was to promote a life of loneliness and dissatisfaction.

A paper for Corporate Finance, complete with hand-drawn graphs of stock prices and PE ratios, recommended investing in clothing company Paul Harris. That company went bankrupt in 2001. A group project investigated how to market "lite" syrup. Another group project studied the culture of Saudi Arabia.

I had a paper on the "Chinese Culture". One on Dante's Inferno. Another I wrote about a freshman whose mother had died of cancer two weeks before the girl left for college, each paper hand-written in blue ink.

There was a paper that contained the typo, "they ass the west," circled by my professor in red pen, probably noted and left uncorrected in the hopes that the professor wouldn't pick up on the error: printing costs in the eighties were high, and, besides, the chances of securing access to a computer in the college lab were always risky.

Some of the papers are printed on continuous-feed paper, with tear marks at the top and bottom of every sheet. Some are on my mother's typing paper. Held to the light, I can read the watermark:

Eagle-a
Type-erase
25% Cotton Fiber USA

The printers I used were either dot matrix or daisy wheel or made use of a type-ball--a golf-ball sized device covered with all of the letters and characters necessary to producing a term paper. Font changes, obviously, weren't an option.


Part of me wants to keep these papers, to hand them down to my children. But as I scan them, I realize that I haven't read them in over twenty years and I'm not reading them now. And so I recycle them: At least ten pounds of paper in all.

As I go through these papers, I wonder about my decision to go into international business twenty-odd years ago. Four of us attended the same college at the same time, one mile away from home. My older sister were already in business, a major she shared with our mother, who put each of us through school by virtue of her position at the college. Our middle sister was in communications. I needed a way to set myself apart.

Having tried and rejected music as a major; having concluded that English/writing majors were "odd"; having taken Linear Algebra with my mother for a total of two panic-stricken days before dropping it; having shed tears over chemistry; having no head at all for dates, I decided upon international business.

Business, yes. But different enough from my sister's major.

Admittedly an odd choice for someone who likes to write. But back then, my values were different:

Today, I would advise no investment in Paul Harris, recommending instead, that buyers put their cash in the local economy. I wouldn't promote the use of "lite" syrup, what with its high fructose corn syrup, cellulose gum, sodium benzoate and sodium hexametaphosphate. I certainly hope I wouldn't speak in condescension about a nation possibly hoping to hold onto a shred of its local culture.

Today, I claim to be against big business. Yet, I wear contact lenses. I drive a car. My houses is heated with gas. I buy clothes... shoes... furniture...printers. I claim I'm against big business. But perhaps only when it's convenient to be so.

Other things in that stack of paperwork I tossed: A product catalogue from Creative Memories--a scrapbooking supply company...instructions from my first cell phone (I'm proud to admit that I got my first cell six years ago and am only on phone number two, and that, yes, it's a dumb phone)...an old article on collaboration...and a letter.

A letter.

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Great 365 Day Purge - Day One

January 1, 2014

Well, my eldest sister has organized what she calls "The Great 365 Day Purge of 2014." This sister...both of my sisters, in fact...are incredibly organized, with beautifully-decorated homes, always pristine. I suspect this sister of mine alphabetizes her daily to-do list and our middle sister rises at five AM for her Pilates class before heading off to the business she owns with her husband.

I do not share this penchant for organization with my siblings. On good days, I make my bed and brush my teeth (hair is optional). But the rules of participation are simple enough for even the queen of chaos to agree to: You must commit to ridding yourself of one thing a day, every day, for a year.

Of course, I signed on immediately. I like these sorts of things, these attempts at self-improvement. Turning over a new tree, as my brother likes to say (His to-do lists are computerized). Just thinking about this project makes me feel lighter. Freer somehow. Perhaps a smidgen organized.

Apparently pets are ineligible for giveaway, which is unfortunate because between five pets; the litter; two scoopers (blue and white); the forty-pound bags of cat food which we use to feed not only our own felines, one of whom adopted us three months ago, but also five neighborhood friends who stop by for a daily snack...between the leashes and the collars; the dog licenses and the rolls of blue scented poop bags that invariably fall out of my coat pocket and unfurl all the way down the street while the dog is yanking off my right arm trying to get to a squirrel...between the flea and tick medicine and Blind Cat's laxative and tummy pills (don't ask)...between the food and the water bowls and the upside-down lid my son uses to give Grey Cat Half & Half every morning before school...between the dog beds and the cages and the vet and boarding bills...Between all of that, I'd easily get through January.

And getting rid of the dog hair in my house would take me through March.

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How to be Cruel

Nick, not that anyone's asked. Eighteen years.

People spit on him. Kick him. Tell him to get a goddamn job. Hold their breath as they pass.

Occasionally a kid'll toss a quarter his way, his parents wearing torn expressions: pride colored with embarrassment that their child saw what they did not; anger that their son has given away his bubblegum money, their money, money they actually worked for.

Or those those holier-than-thou bits, white turtlenecks neat beneath Christmas sweaters dancing with reindeer and jolly elves, even the big guy himself.

Not God, of course. Nobody wears a sweater knitted with a picture of God.

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Fog

Lilla Mae and Holly kneel on the bench and stare out the window, their breath fogging two small circles upon the glass. Holly points. "I don't like the look of those trees. They look like arms reaching out to grab us."

Lilla Mae laughs. "Trees don't grab people, silly."

Holly shivers. "What does then?"

Lilla Mae studies Holly, this woman-child who seems so much older and wiser than a typical nine-year- old. She's certainly more mature than Lilla Mae's sister, who celebrated her tenth birthday just before Lilla Mae was brought here. "A good school," her parents had reassured her, they in the front seat of their old car, she in the back, right in the middle so that she could lean her head forward and speak over the roar of the engine. "You'll get a good education--better than you could ever hope to have in the village."

"But...it must be expensive."

Her father had looked at her in the rearview mirror then. "They gave you a scholarship, sweetie."

And it's this image that has remained with her: Her father's eyes, reflected back to her, smiling yet a bit tentative. There was some emotion he'd held back. Something he was trying to hide.



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Exchanged

Every year, right around Thanksgiving, or, likely before, my sisters would begin planning the cookie exchange. This annual event filled me with terror: While my mother and sisters birthed perfect creations, each cookie so lovely, eating it was almost a crime, my yearly contributions always fell a bit short of the mark. Rather than being festive, my cookies looked a bit wilted and sad: Either the tips of the stars I'd painstakingly cut out would break off or, worse, they'd curl, giving the stars the look of a hippy, happy starfish, the effects of which no amount of stoic, starry frosting could counteract. Or I'd roll out my cookies wrong: So thick that a saw would be required to break them or so thin they'd be nearly translucent and burned at the edges.

It's not just cookies that elude me. I am, in fact, rather inept at most things domestic. It is easy to identify me in old family photographs: I'm the one with the messy hair or the gaping zipper or the shirt tugged on inside-out. My infrequent attempts at sewing usually bring me to utter words not often heard in our house. And I've knitted the first two rows of a sock thirteen hundred times, only to drop a stitch, or drop the needles, or to lose count while chatting and have to pull out the stitches and begin again.



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Rooftop View

Gloria Santos turns a page of her book and adjusts herself in the overstuffed chair--the only thing she got in the divorce settlement, and only because her husband had always hated the color. She tucks her feet beside her. She is pleased that, at fifty-eight, she is still able to accomplish this small feat. She attributes it to her lifelong practice of yoga.

Her telephone rings. She signs and picks up, marking her place in her book with an index finger. "Hello, Howard."

"How did you know it was me?"

"Who else would bother calling me on Christmas?" Or ever, for that matter.

"Marie wants to know if you've changed your mind. I can pick you up."

"I'm fine."

"What are you doing?"

"Talking to you, at present, but prior to that I was reading my book. Curled up in the inglenook." She smiles, delighting in her brother's spare vocabulary. "It's a nook. By the library fireplace." Just to clarify: The condo she purchased (cash, of course, she'd told Howard) six months ago has four thousand square feet and three fireplaces. "Did the children have a good haul?"

She doubts it. What with Marie's obsessive coupon-clipping and thrift-store scavenging, the brats probably wouldn't have had anything if it weren't for Gloria's generosity.

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Brandy

Midnight: Calico paws at eggnog; discovers brandy.

Five AM: "Santa's a cat!" The children indicate paw prints scattered beneath the tree.

"Don't be ridiculous," Dad says. "Santa's human."

"He's an elf," Mom insists.


This was written for this week's Trifecta Writing Challenge.

Charles Dickens, in A Christmas Carol, wrote “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.” We are giving you exactly 33 words to make us laugh out loud and spread some festive cheer.



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For Good

"Try it now," Dink shouts from the roof where he's just finished installing a dish swaddled in a flannel pillow case, of all things. Betty Lewis's flannel pillowcase, to be exact. "To protect it," Dink had said, by way of explanation, when he'd come through the door last last night bearing his apology.

Doreen shoves Frodo from her chair, the Victorian parlor chair with red velvet upholstery that she scored curbside fourteen years ago. She sits in the space vacated by Frodo and notes that it's warm.

"Well, at least you're good for something," she tells the dog, who circles around three times before curling up in a tight ball at her feet. Spring is here, but every so often, it decides, like her husband Dink, to skip town for a few days before settling in for good.

Doreen picks up the remote and aims it at the flat screen television, the second part of Dink's apology, now hanging on the wall like a massive trophy.


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Spring Thaw

Doreen poured a cup of coffee and sank her chair: the Victorian parlor chair with red velvet upholstery that she'd scored curbside fourteen years ago. "Didn't pay a dime for it," she told visitors staring at this throne parked in the center of the cabin. She ran her hand across the armrest where Frodo had been allowed, nay, encouraged to chew freely and with gusto.

"My boy's teething," Dink would say, every time Doreen protested. She shook her head. That damn dog had been teething for nigh eight years.

"This chair is the best thing that ever happened to me," she said. And Dink, loyal vagrant of a husband, that part-timing, two-timing, constant-whining lazy-ass of a husband had let Frodo destroy it.

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Myopic Me

Tree roots cup snowmelt, miniature basins gathering light and returning it to the stars, a dazzle of sunshine guilding the frosty air. I pass, myopic, intent on the cell phone jangling my pocket.