The Dead Space
I'd decided to call a truce with Jim, promising to be more available to him, which meant I was on the road a great deal, all the while thinking about how to wedge more reading and writing into my monotonous days as a supply line for the nearly completed church. Since there was little time for anything creative, I ticked through all the things I'd heard about that were happening at home—exciting plans being made by some friends and struggles being faced by others. I had been trimming my business down to the bone, sending my accounts—one by one—to a printer in Lexington because being on the road so much made it impossible for me to service them well enough to do them justice.
There was only the occasional moment when I'd miss the machinations of the business world, and one of them was touring a friend's new offices. I drove away wondering if I'd sold out. I let my mind wander back through the successes I'd had—being named Chattanooga's Young Careerist of the Year at 26 years old after having started my own company the year before, then managing to land the First Runner-up position in the state Young Career Woman of the Year competition a few months later. Truth be known, running a business didn't interest me all that much because I preferred staying steeped in creativity but the stroking my ego received from the attention I had garnered for my accomplishments brought about a poignant nostalgia. Might I have kept at it? I questioned, feeling as if half of my identity had been slowly vanishing while I wasn't paying attention.
The thoughts of missed opportunities were too painful to hold so I let my mind drift over the social whirlwind our week at home had been. We had gathered with our Steamboat ski buddies for dinner at the home of one of the couples to plan our annual weeklong trip of frivolity and indulgences. Their life came with a wholesome surprise: they were truly the most Rockwellean family I'd ever met. I was left asking, Are these the same people we party with when we are in ski country? The two children—boy oldest and girl youngest, of course—did their homework while Mom and Dad cooked dinner, then Mom graded the homework, had them make corrections and sent them off to do their piano lessons while we adults ate.
The boy was slightly chubby and had pale eyes the color of the icy-blue Jordon Almonds I loved to find amongst the pastel pinks and greens in the boxes filled with the oblong candies at movie theaters. He had a jolly, open demeanor and declared just before going off to bed that he was going to own an aircraft company some day. When he left the room after hugging Mom and Dad goodnight, proud father, an engineer, said they didn't discourage him because it wasn't good to give children the message that they couldn't achieve whatever they set out to do in life. He was the first and only child I'd ever known to tell political jokes in grammar school!
Something that Eudora Welty wrote came to mind as I was journaling about this wholesome family the next morning: "I was well advanced in adolescence before I realized that in plenty of the homes where I played with schoolmates and went to their parties, children lied to their parents and parents lied to their children and to each other." I marveled that this family seemed the antithesis of those I'd known, which resembled the lying variety that Welty had so cunningly identified. I wondered if the innocence would hold or whether the fact that the children, 11 and 13 years old, were still young enough to be unspoiled created the feeling of innocence. Would they change when the world had had its way with them? I wondered.
The night after we'd been shunted into Americana's nostalgic version of family, we had dinner with a friend, a single man, who'd decided he wanted to go into the priesthood in his 40's. I had to admit he was well suited for it. I already thought of him as priestly, as he was a chalice bearer in church on Sundays and I was accustomed to seeing him in vestments, his white cassock tied around his ample belly with the tasseled rope that was part of the "uniform." He was worried about being accepted because of his age and the fact that there were seven candidates vying for only two positions. I'd never known much about him and when we talked that night he revealed that he loved to spend time in cemeteries. I thought it odd until he explained that it was a great way to study history.
His favorite was the Forrest Park Cemetery in St. Elmo because it held one of the most fascinating stories he'd ever come across. He said it contained a large section of children's graves from the late 1800s. He'd been curious as to why and his research found that a bubonic plague had swept through Chattanooga during that time. He had spent hours in the library trying to learn more about the outbreak that had killed so many babies and I respected him greatly for the depth of his curiousity. I'd always liked to tease him because he had a tendency to embarrass easily. Every time I said anything to amuse him, his fair skin would instantly flush bright pink.
He blamed his Scottish ancestry, which had also given him his red hair and mustache. He had a self-conscious habit of constantly pushing his round tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses to the bridge of his nose because they would slide down whenever he bashfully looked at his lap during conversations, which he did frequently. After a meal with him, I always felt a little jumpy because he used his hands so emphatically to make particular points that I found myself reflexively thinking I should reach out to keep him from knocking his drink over. I had kept my body in check as not to embarrass him that night, so my keyed-up muscles were still twitching as we drove home that evening, Jim quiet as he guided us through the inky air.
The next morning, my inane muscle-crimping exercises continued when a man working on our condominium pranced up and down a ladder at such a madcap clip I was sure he was going to land in the middle of the burled wood coffee table, flattening it and himself as he blathered on about an ex-girlfriend, whom he said was "Brenda Somebody." What, I thought, she's now Brenda Nobody? I had been trying unsuccessfully to read, finally giving up to turn my full attention toward the gabby guy. He was a walking cliché with his tee shirt that sported the phrase "No pain, no gain" and his automobile tag proclaiming he was "Mr. Pump!"
I quickly realized there wasn't a chance in hell that he was going to let me have any quiet to finish the chapter, the first paragraph of which I'd started four times already, so I decided to get an early start on driving to Atlanta to have my car serviced. I was dreading the two-hour trip south and berated myself for my selfishness as I pulled out of the driveway. How could I be so ungrateful about having so much wealth? I scolded myself. It wasn't that I didn't feel thankful for having things; it was just all the dead space in life that maintaining material wealth brought. And it wasn't as if there weren't interesting things that could have filled in the void. There was simply no time to engage them.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
