Xianna Michaels's Blog, page 7

Forward Reviews gives Lily of the Valley a five star review

Lily of the Valley is an elegantly bound poetic volume that celebrates the varied inheritances of Jewish American women with poignancy.

Lily of the Valley is Xianna Michaels’s graceful and affecting poetic saga, the story of five generations of Jewish American women navigating the promises of the New World.

The volume opens on a pogrom that rips through a shtetl, rending families irrevocably. Young Laili is sent with her her sister Basya to New York, with the hope that they’ll be able to enjoy more freedoms there. Laili’s name is anglicized by Ellis Island officials; now known as “Lily,” she finds work in a sweatshop sewing clothing. As she sews, she dreams of an easier life for her children, preferably in the golden valleys of the West.

Though tragedies continue to fall upon her family—a shop fire kills one matriarch; a son abandons his tradition and family to pursue life on his own; a daughter returns to Europe, too near to the Holocaust for safety—so, too, do the generations that follow Lily find their fortunes in America increasing. They become business owners, college graduates, parents, and the pursuers of old family dreams. Their Judaism ebbs and flows in proportion to the challenges they face—work on Shabbat gives way to the avoidance of the mikveh, compromises are made with the observance of mitzvot, especially around kashrut. Yet through it all, they maintain a sense of connection to their tradition, and to the family members who sacrificed so much to provide them with opportunities.

Lily of the Valley is written in English sestet form, a rhyme scheme that initially requires some getting used to; the violence of the opening pogrom fits uneasily with the apparent jauntiness of the poetic formula. Conjunctions are employed a bit too freely, and not every end rhyme is a comfortable fit. Related misgivings give way beneath the charm of Michaels’s verses, though. These lines breathe life into the women they focus on: the first Lily is a determined dreamer, her daughter Molly a believer, her daughter Lily a stylish girl who dusts off family aspirations. Each woman, in the limited lines allotted to her, is fleshed out well, particularly in relation to the decisions she makes around religious observance.

The intrafamily loyalty and support conveyed throughout Lily of the Valley is inspirational without being cloying, and the book moves from generation to generation with significant emotional prowess. This book is impressive for the balances it strikes: managing to be feminist, even as Lily’s great-granddaughter moves back toward observance, to the surprised delight of her nonobservant family; achieving a well-rounded picture of Jewish American history, though in the span of a few stanzas each on just fifty pages. The end result is a project certain to woo readers with its loveliness. Its beautiful, classic packaging, paired with the delicate, scene-setting illustrations that run throughout, make the project an all the more likely candidate for family treasure status.

Lily of the Valley is an elegantly bound poetic volume that celebrates the varied inheritances of Jewish American women with poignancy.

 

Reviewed by Michelle Anne Schingler

February 10, 2016

 Read full review here on Forward Reviews.

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New York Fashion Week Past and Present

New York Fashion Week 2016 for the Fall fashion preview takes place in New York City from February 11th through the 18th and is one of the major fashion events in the world. From New York it will move on to London, Milan and Paris. During Fashion Week international fashion collections are presented — often in elaborate runway productions — for buyers, the press and the public. The events comprise a huge extravaganza splashed all over every media outlet, print and online.

Fashion Week is very much on my mind right now because my new book, Lily of the Valley — An American Jewish Journey, has a fashion motif running through it. It’s about five generations of American Jewish women and the American Dream they share. The very first Lily toils away in a sweatshop and imagines designing beautiful gowns. That dream is passed on through the generations, but at the turn of the 20th Century no one could have imagined what the modern-day Fashion Week would be like.

Few of us, myself included, know how it all began. So I looked it up (no, not online – they actually have books about this). Many of us know that Paris had long been regarded as the fashion capital of the world. But how, I wondered, did that get started? The French, it seems, were the first to make an industry out of fashion. Many historians of such things say that it all began in the 17th Century with the extravagant fashions of Louis XIV’s court. We do know that the fashion press started in his reign, establishing the notion of fashion “seasons.” Certainly for centuries the highest quality fabrics and materials were found in France, and the first couturier houses were established in the 19th Century in Paris.

But the truth is, fashion as a phenomenon goes way back before that. A case could be made that the first fashion shows date to the Middle Ages, although you didn’t travel to the shows, the shows came to you! It happens that noblewomen long ago wanted very much to be fashionable, and that meant following what the royal court was wearing. But if you lived in a castle or manor house in the countryside, how were you to know? You couldn’t exactly check out Instagram, or even the latest edition of Vogue. Travel was risky, uncomfortable and extremely time-consuming. And so the queen and her ladies, well-attuned to their role as fashion arbiters, would have duplicates made of their magnificent gowns. The duplicates would then be put on mannequins mounted on wagons and the wagons would tour the countryside, so noblewomen could see them and have their own dressmakers copy them. I suppose this was the origin of the knock-off, except that it had royal sanction!

Perhaps France being considered the fashion capital of the world can be traced to one of the first fashion icons of record, the beautiful and indomitable Eleanor of Aquitaine. Having grown up an heiress in the ruling family of Aquitaine, she was used to splendor and culture. But when she married the future King Louis VII of France in 1137, she found Paris to be rather bleak and uninspiring. So she set about transforming it into a city of culture and beauty, and introduced fashion into the court. Her idea of fashion included sumptuous fabrics, elaborate designs and extravagant jewels. Nothing has ever been the same since. And when she had her marriage annulled and married the future King Henry II of England, she brought French fashion to the English court. Of course she did.

Interestingly, the beginning of the end of French domination of the fashion world actually originated with another Eleanor. During World War II Eleanor Lambert was press director of the American fashion industry’s first promotional organization, the New York Press Institute. Once the Nazis occupied France, American fashion journalists could not travel to Paris to see French fashion shows (surely the least of the problems at the time, but that’s another story.) So in 1943 Lambert created the world’s first organized fashion week, which she called “Press Week.” The intention was to showcase American designers with their clothing constructed from American materials to editors who were used to looking to Paris as the epitome of all things couture. The concept worked and Press Week eventually became New York Fashion Week, with not just editors but buyers, stylists, celebrities, paparazzi and bloggers coming to see the runway shows. Once held in lofts, galleries, hotels and other available venues throughout the city, then for a time in tents in Bryant Park, today the extravaganza takes place at Lincoln Center.

My daughter Abi is a stylist who attends Fashion Week as the guest of several designers. She describes the experience as a great deal of fun and very exciting, but says that besides all the glitz and hoopla, besides the invitation-only runway shows, there is something else going on. The Lincoln Center Atrium becomes a gathering place for all sorts of creative people. There are fashion students, photographers, bloggers and spectators. There are people wearing wonderful, creative and varied interpretations of what’s in style and what’s coming. Fashion is alive and vibrant, and the evidence is outside the official venues as well as inside.

The very first Lily of my story would have been dazzled and overwhelmed by Fashion Week. But her great great granddaughter, also Lily, would feel right at home.

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Celebrating a Writing Rite of Passage – National Handwriting Day

January 22nd is National Handwriting Day. Now, I am well aware that many people might consider such a day a relic in the age of the iPhone and the ubiquitous keyboard. Who actually picks up a pen anymore, or connects their letters in what used to be called penmanship?

Well, it turns out plenty of people, and some who do it rarely wish they did it more. Like one family member who says that sometimes he needs to take hand notes in meetings but twenty-four hours later can’t read his own writing. Or the physician who always had the typical dreadful doctor’s handwriting but says these days it’s far worse: never mind the pharmacist; now even he can’t read his own prescriptions! Or the students who are at a complete loss to write out a one sentence honor code on a standardized test. Then there are the students laboriously writing answers by hand in workbooks, itching to get back to their devices, and the poor teachers trying to decipher what they’ve written.

I could go on, but I think everybody knows the drill by now. Clearly things are changing; we all know we are in the midst of a technological upheaval not seen since the advent of the printing press. But talk of the complete demise of handwriting may be a bit premature, not to mention shortsighted. So, a few observations:

It might be well to think about handwriting not only from the perspective of end result, but of the process itself. Yes, a case might be made that the elegant handwritten thank you note is well on its way to extinction, and that eventually students will simply be typing away taking notes in front of teachers who never knew any other way and are not driven to distraction by the constant clack-clacking. But it’s not only about those end points. Among other things, there is on-going research into how learning to connect letters at a young age actually helps kids form new neural pathways in the brain, activating areas that using a keyboard doesn’t. Writing in cursive helps train the brain to integrate information; practicing the connections it requires may actually increase language facility. Certainly, it helps develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. And yes, I realize the brains of the young are wired differently and that they, the digital natives, are way ahead of us digital immigrants. But still, before all the evidence is in, do we really want to risk all that brain development that we used to foster in the schools?

And it’s not just about the very young. There has been at least one study done of college students wherein one group took lecture notes on their laptops and the other by hand. When they were tested on the material afterward without having the opportunity to study their notes, it was found that the students who took hand notes did far better. Apparently, typing allows you simply to transcribe fairly mindlessly everything that’s said, almost like a court reporter; whereas taking notes by hand requires some degree of synthesis and summary, which facilitates memory.

As a writer I feel compelled to weigh in on all this vis-à-vis the creative process. Yes, most writers today, particularly the young ones, probably compose on the keyboard. But not all. There are those, young and pre-digital, who prefer doing at least a first draft by hand. They find that the movement of the hand, the sweep of the pen, allows accessing the creative right brain in a way that the keyboard does not. The keyboard is perhaps a step detached from the intuitive brain.

For my Baby Boomer self, suffice it to say that I love writing by hand. I have, however, lately learned to type some of my essays. I don’t love the process, but I can appreciate the efficiency of it. When it comes to composing poetry though, when it comes to creating my stories, only a fountain pen will do. I work intuitively, and the pen, ink and hand are as much a part of the process as my brain. In fact if I’m really in flow, they will bypass my logical left brain altogether!

There is another advantage to writing by hand. Our handwriting has life to it. Years after we’ve written something, the words on the page not only reveal their obvious meaning but can provide a treasure trove of revelations about our thoughts. A case in point is my new book Lily of the Valley — An American Jewish Journey, scheduled for release in March. Lily was originally written as a poem to be performed at a banquet for Chabad of the Valley in Encino, California. When I decided to turn it into a book more than a decade later, I went back to my original notebooks. And there I found not only stanzas that had been cut in the interest of time, not only arrows and cross-outs that might serve as a roadmap to how I arrived at the finished version. I also found embedded in the lettering itself a record of my thoughts. Why did I put this here? What was Lily trying to tell me there? What was the character feeling in this passage? I found a wealth of information that would have been lost to me had I had only a typewritten version saved.

Back in the day, learning cursive in about third grade was a much-anticipated rite of passage. It was one of our first forays into the adult world. It was one of the ways we sought to establish our identity. Fewer and fewer students have that experience today. Cursive writing is not part of the Common Core curriculum. As one LA area teacher put it, there is very little time for teaching anything outside of Common Core. But if a teacher really wants to, he or she is welcome to try to fit it in. We can all figure out what that means.

My grandchildren attend Jewish day schools, however, and imagine my delight when I found out that they are being taught handwriting! I have two third graders this year in two different schools, and they are actually learning to connect their letters. Both blissfully unaware of any controversy surrounding this new skill set, they are delighted to have reached this milestone.

Perhaps the most interesting analysis I’ve heard of this whole conundrum comes from a very astute middle schooler I know. She learned cursive in the third grade and says that she used it for about two years but then reverted to printing, which she actually finds faster. Her teacher requires that formal essays be typed, but for other work doesn’t care if the letters are connected or not. Gone are the days when “Penmanship” took up a place on the report card. However, this young lady did say to me, completely unprompted, that she likes to write the first draft of her essays by hand. It’s easier, she says, to come up with ideas that way. She also has developed a distinctive cursive signature, and she informed me that she and her friends like to dot their “i’s” with hearts. Some things, I am happy to report, never change.

And for those who would prefer to buck the current trend, there is help and hope. DeAnn Singh, master calligrapher and founder of Designing Letters in Los Angeles, has a steady stream of handwriting students. Many are adults who come for refresher courses. They have seen their handwriting deteriorate over the years because they spend so much time on keyboards. Yet there are times when they do need to hand write, and they want their work to look presentable and be readable. Still other students love and collect fine fountain pens and want their writing to reflect the respect they have for the art of handwriting. She also teaches children who are not being taught cursive in school and whose parents feel that learning handwriting is important. More than just wanting their children to have legible writing, many parents feel that people still make judgements based on a person’s handwriting, and that those with fine writing will always seem more sophisticated and perhaps a bit smarter.

Cindy Abrams, a Handwriting Initiative specialist with a background in occupational therapy, adds a further perspective. She teaches handwriting at various grade levels in the Jewish day schools in Los Angeles. She speaks of handwriting as a way of firing circuits in the brain, and of the fine motor skills it gives young children. She has seen very bright children with great ideas have difficulty getting them down on paper because they were never taught proper letter formation. Once they learn, the fluidity of cursive motion ensures that ideas come more fluidly. Interestingly, she also says that when children learn to write properly, they develop better posture for keyboarding, which will help them avoid syndromes like carpal tunnel in the future. Finally, children enjoy connecting letters as an art form, as a way to express themselves.

Surely that’s how it was back in the day when we all eagerly awaited the privilege of learning handwriting. To me it’s always been an art form, and a joyful one at that. So even if for many it ceases to be the primary mode of written communication, let it always be one of our most beautiful arts. So bring on National Handwriting Day! Pick up a pen, sweep it across the page and feel the utter delight of creating art out of letters.

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National Clear Off Your Desk Day

January 11th is apparently National Clear Off Your Desk Day. Who knew?

When I think about desk-clearing, I immediately think of the creative process, and how idiosyncratic it is for each individual. I know people who cannot stand a clear, empty desk. It’s as if they find it too sterile, that it somehow paralyzes their thought processes. I’ve known other very creative types who need to see everything in front of them. Their work surfaces may look disorganized to outsiders, but they know exactly where everything is and what needs to be done. Woe betide the misguided organizer who dares lay a hand on the piles!

And then there are those, like me, who love to start the day with a clear work surface. Whether I am writing or doing artwork, the early morning hours are the most important for my creative process. I must walk into a serene study, light my candle, put on soft meditative music, and begin working. G-d willing, if I am productive, I will fill the desk and every available surface in my tiny study with words and drawings before the day is done. And then I will scan, send, file, sort and put it all away in my armoire before calling it a night. The next morning it all comes out again, but for me the ritual is soothing and helps draw me back into my creative realm.

As I said, everyone works differently. But context also matters. Ask me about how I organize my shoes. Ah well, that’s another story entirely, and I’ve needed my youngest granddaughters to help me! Stay tuned…

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I’m Glad There’s a Pledge of Allegiance Day

Did you know that December 28th is Pledge of Allegiance Day? Did you know there was such a thing? Well, neither did I, but I’m glad there is. That’s because, as adults, we don’t get much opportunity to think about — let alone recite — the Pledge, do we? We get to sing the national anthem at major happenings like sporting events and presidential debates (which may be said to have other things in common as well, but that’s another story.) But when do we get to recite the Pledge?

When we were children, we recited it every morning in school. We didn’t necessarily contemplate it, but it was a sacred ritual. We didn’t necessarily understand all the words, but we knew it by heart. We might even have been certain, until the fifth grade, that it said ” one nation, invisible…”, but it didn’t matter. What we knew, maybe from our parents, maybe from our teachers, maybe just from breathing the air, was that it was a privilege to live in the United States, and that pledging allegiance was something we were proud to do.

In the neighborhood where I spent my young childhood, most of the kids had similar backgrounds. Our parents were first generation Americans, our fathers had fought in the War, and almost none of the grandparents spoke English. They spoke either Yiddish or Italian. I remember there was one Presbyterian family on our block. The grandparents spoke English; I couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept. To me all grandparents came over in steerage from places they didn’t want to talk about, so their children and grandchildren could walk down the street without fear, could be assured of enough to eat, could call themselves American.

My husband had a very different background. His parents were Holocaust survivors and he was born in South America. When his mother went into labor with him, she walked to the hospital with her hands in the air so the soldiers wouldn’t shoot her; there was a revolution going on and she was breaking curfew. My husband came here when he was eleven and became a citizen at sixteen. His appreciation for the flag of the United States is visceral, because he knows all too well what its absence can mean.

Pledge of Allegiance Day is not a federal holiday. The banks won’t be closed, nor will the post office. There won’t be fireworks and barbecues, nor many turkey dinners with all the trimmings. But we do have an American flag flying next to our front door, and I will just stand there on December 28th with my hand on my heart, and quietly recite the pledge. And that will be enough.

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Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson

People often ask me if I have a favorite poet, and I usually say that I have favorite poems rather than one favorite poet. But if I had to choose, then I’d say that besides Shakespeare, who is in a class by himself, it would be Emily Dickinson.

As a sixth grader I remember learning the poem “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” and enjoying the picture it painted so much. Who can forget the phrase “a whiplash/Unbraiding in the sun”, or the uncertainty of that “tighter breathing” at the end?

As a college student I still loved the imagery and I appreciated the unique slant rhyme and her subtle adherence to meter. I found her work haunting and unforgettable. Sometimes, as in “My Life Closed Twice Before it’s Close”, I thought her a little too obsessed with death. But that was before I really knew her.

Decades later I came to understand that she was a mystic, and her poems reflect her understanding of a world most of us cannot see. Rather than obsessing about death, she is telling us that this life is not all there is. Her work is deeply spiritual and very uplifting.

She is one of my favorite poets to teach, not least because of the charm and brevity of her meaningful lines. My favorite Dickinson poem is probably “To Make A Prairie”. A child can appreciate it for the picture of that clover and bee. But an adult can understand that the poem is about the extraordinary power of the imagination. The conciseness of such a powerful poem only serves to emphasize how much can be accomplished with so little – just a clover and a bee – or if need be, just the power of the mind.

Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she lived all her life. When she died in 1886, she left some 1,800 poems, most of them unpublished in her lifetime. What an extraordinary legacy she left to the world! No matter how many times I dip into her collections, there is always another poem that I’ve never seen before. She is a constant source of inspiration and delight.

Happy Birthday, Emily Dickinson!

Here’s my favorite of her poems:

To Make a Prairie

by Emily Dickinson

    To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do

If bees are few.

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Thanksgiving 2015

I have always loved Thanksgiving. I love gathering with family and friends, decorating my autumnal table, and serving the turkey and all the trimmings. And I’ve always thought of Thanksgiving as a special opportunity to thank G-d for America, for the miracle that it is, and for all that it has done for the Jews.

I find myself thinking about this more than ever now, with my new book, Lily of the Valley – An American Jewish Journey, about to be published. Lily, the first of five generations of Jewish women in the book, survives a pogrom and comes to the Goldena Medina, the Golden Land of her dreams. She might not have been able to afford the turkey, but she surely would have embraced this holiday in gratitude for America and its promise for a better life for her children.

Today as we watch the horror and turmoil engulfing so much of the world, how can we be anything but grateful to G-d for this country, grateful that we are here, that America has given us so much? America has even given us the ability to take our freedom for granted. But let’s not.

Happy Thanksgiving , everyone!

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Technology and the Youngest Generation

Conversations with my grandchildren about technology are occasionally a bit lowering, but more often than not are delightful and illuminating.

For example, when I tell my teenage grandkids that when their grandfather (Zaidy) and I went to college, there was exactly one computer on campus and it was the size of half my house, they look at me kind of squinty-eyed. Then they say something on the order of, ” Come on, Nana, you can’t be that old!”

But I give them a lot of leeway, because, after all, they are the ones who programmed my phone, taught me how to buy music from iTunes and download an app. And they are the ones who come running over like the cavalry to the rescue when my computer goes weird on me and I panic, afraid I’ve lost everything I ever put on it. So they get a pass.

Then there are my 8-10 year olds. I have explained to them that Zaidy actually had one of the original cell phones. It was the size of a shoebox, I tell them, and he carried it under his arm. They look at me with big, wide eyes. I go on to say that because Zaidy is a doctor, he used to carry a beeper. Before there were cell phones, whenever he would get paged, he would have to get off the freeway and go looking for a pay phone.

“What’s a pay phone?” they ask me. Okay, I know, I walked right into that one.

And then we come to the conversation I had recently with my 5-year-old granddaughter. She excitedly invited me into her room to see the very special item she had just acquired. It was some sort of plush pillow with an embedded electronic gizmo that allowed it to project a rainbow of colored lights on the ceiling.

I was suitably impressed and asked her where she got it. I was really curious because, like many a doting grandparent, I wanted to be up on the best places to buy the latest must-have paraphernalia. And I had no idea- had it come from a toy store, electronics store, bath and linen shop?

It turns out none of the above. “Oh, I got it on Amazon,” she breezily informed me.

“Oh really,” said I. “What’s Amazon?”

Now I have to stop here and say that had I asked this question of the teenagers, they would have laughed and said something like, “Yeah, right , Nana. I’ll send you the link to the so-and-so I really need….”

And had I asked the 8-10 year olds, the response would have have been an incredulous look. “Really, Nana, you don’t know? Where on earth have you BEEN?”

But this little 5-year-old smiled in all earnestness, happy to educate me. “Oh, it’s this thing you go to online,” she said. “You find what you want and then you push the buttons and it comes to your door.”

“Really?” I said. “It just comes to your door? That’s amazing! Ah, tell me, do you have to pay for it?”

“Well, of course, you pay for it. You’re buying it! That’s why you push the buttons,” she answered sagely.

“Oh, I see. So tell me, who exactly pays for it?” I inquired.

She cocked her head, narrowing her eyes in thought. “I have no idea,” she replied.

“Hmmm,” I murmured, and said nothing more.

Far be it from me to burst her little bubble. After all, she is still of an age to believe that Anna and Elsa, Mickey and Minnie all live at Disneyland. I wouldn’t want to disillusion her about the magic of Amazon.

And when you think about what life was like 100 years ago, even 30 years ago, well, you could make the case that in many ways we are living in a very magical age, indeed!

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Cocoon – A Poem by Xianna Michaels

Circuits shorting; ceilings falling;

Chaos doesn’t cease!

Dimly I hear Spirit calling –

I’ll write when I have peace.

Or is it just the opposite,

Distractions sent to me

Until I write in spite of it,

This lesson meant for me:

To be impervious, cocooned,

With pen in hand and soul attuned.

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Another Kind of OCD

Those of us who took Abnormal Psych back in the day learned about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. As such, the wry observation that someone is OCD gets bandied about a bit too casually these days. But I submit that there is a new kind of OCD afoot, one that didn’t exist when we Boomers were in college.

It’s Obsessive Costco Disorder and I very much fear my dear husband has it. The disorder manifests in several ways. The first is an incessant need to extol the virtues of Costco. The amazing quality of the merchandise! The extraordinarily low prices! The serendipity of it all! Then there is the strange suspension of common sense. To wit: Is it actually efficient for a physician who works 80 hours per week to drive 20 minutes to wait in line for 40 minutes to save 20 cents per gallon for gasoline? (I calculate this to be about a $7.00 savings.) Am I missing something here?

And then there is the Las Vegas Syndrome. You know the one, wherein money isn’t really money in Vegas. My husband, praise G-d, doesn’t suffer from the Vegas malady, but it translates all too well to Costco. The absolute amount of money you spend apparently doesn’t matter, because “It’s such a good buy!” The fact that you don’t need 24 rolls of paper towels and 3 new sweatshirts is irrelevant because “IT’S SUCH A GOOD BUY!”

The laws of physics are apparently also suspended. Costco sells high quality shirts, you see, at wondrously low prices. And you can keep buying them and stuffing them into drawers without ever throwing existing old shirts away. And you will still have plenty of room. The shirts will not overflow the dresser, nor take over the belt and tie space, nor pile up on the closet floor. Of course not, for such is the magic of Costco.

And finally, dear Reader, there is the need to stock up on vast quantities of huge bottles and boxes of items as if the Apocalypse were upon us. This is instead of the reality that we are a couple – two people – who are blessed to have half our children and numerous grandchildren living locally and visiting frequently. But they have their own houses with Costco inventory, as it happens. So why do we need enough mayonnaise, dishwashing liquid and cereal boxes for the U.S. Army mess? Or jugs of olive oil too heavy for me to lift? Yes, we use olive oil. But I couldn’t get through this amount in six months. Doesn’t anyone know the stuff goes rancid?

For years my husband and I have had what I might euphemistically call a difference of opinion about household inventory. I’ve persisted in buying one or two small-to-medium bottles of shampoo, cold-pressed olive oil or liquid soap at a time at the supermarket. And he has continued to buy enough of everything to quarter the California National Guard if need be. You never know, after all. He has accused me of being a spendthrift, because the price per ounce of my little shampoo versus his is higher. Never mind that his once slid out of my hand in the shower and nearly broke my toe; I digress. As far as he is concerned, I spend money indiscriminately.

And then, dear Reader, I had an epiphany. Belated, I grant you, but at least it finally occurred to me. Our house was built in 1929. We still have the original kitchen, including the original terracotta tile counters and wooden cabinets with beveled glass and black hinges. I kid you not. I’ve only made two changes in the 30+ years we’ve lived here: I built in a stove (since the house came with a Bunsen burner), using tile I found in a salvage yard to match the original tile. And I put in a Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer and had paneling made to match the original cabinetry. I like antiques and I believe in preserving as much as possible of old houses. Ours has all the original French doors, wood flooring, tile and brickwork. It’s an old Spanish hacienda and we bought it because we loved it, so why would we change it?

But while older houses of this vintage tend to have quality construction and fine architectural detail, one thing they lack that new houses have aplenty is storage space. The closets are small. The shelves are narrow. And kitchen storage is at a premium. Our so-called pantry is one shallow closet with cubbies smaller than you find in your average pre-school. The overflow goes into one garage cabinet. That’s it for all the paper goods, body wash and ketchup bottles on steroids that my husband wants to buy. The bathrooms have the original pedestal sinks – lots of charm but, alas, no big cabinets there either.

And so it dawned on me: Everyone we know who lives in a house either lives in a fairly new one, where there are huge walk-in closets with deep shelves built with big-box stores in mind. Or people live in old houses with remodeled kitchens and huge walk-in pantries with deep shelves just the right size for all the bounty of Costco.

I never had the slightest desire to remodel my kitchen. But I told my dear husband that if he wanted to spend whatever it costs these days to re-do the kitchen ($50,000? $80,000?), knock out walls and install gigantic cabinets, then we could certainly begin saving money at Costco. We could buy big jugs of anything his heart desired! All those paper towels! The shampoo! Just think of it!

Need I say, dear Reader, that since we had that little chat, I have not endured the slightest criticism of my penchant for buying small shampoo and spice bottles? But he, the dear man, still comes home with boxes full of wonderful treasures from Costco and searches in vain for a place to store them. His car does have a big trunk, though.

As I said, Obsessive Costco Disorder.

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