(While I’m enjoying the holidays, I’m sharing some of my posts from my previous blog. I hope you enjoy them. This post is from July 2011.)
It seems that Austin, our fair city, has found itself smack-dab in the middle of GQ Magazine’s list of the 40 worst-dressed cities in America. At number 18, we come in exactly one slot above the Jersey Shore, which isn’t saying much at all. Sorry, Snooki!
I grew up south of here in San Antonio, where making a trip to the grocery store requires full makeup and perfectly styled hair. In fact, I used to wake up at 5 am each morning during high school, just so I had plenty of time to shower, scrunch my waist-length curly hair, do my makeup, and get dressed before the first bell at 7:08.
Back-to-school shopping involved a trip to the Clinique counter to stock up on makeup, as well as the purchase of several pairs of shoes to go with all of the new outfits we bought to start the year off right.
When I first moved to Austin and began teaching, I quickly realized that none of my fellow teachers wore pantyhose with their skirts and dresses. That was beyond weird to me, because it seemed almost vulgar to let your bare legs show, plus how did they keep their panty lines from showing? Where I’m from, it’s not unusual for women to wear pantyhose with shorts. It took me that entire year to get used to the idea of bare legs, but I finally started wearing open-toed shoes and sandals as summer rolled around. The next year, I ditched the hose, and I have never looked back.
I also remember sitting in a teacher meeting and realizing that I had on more makeup than any other woman in the room, a fact that shocked me quite a bit. That, I can’t give up, and I still wear full makeup and fix my hair each morning, even if I have no plans to leave the house.
While my husband was on vacation from work recently, we made a day-trip to Boerne, a quaint little town just north of San Antonio, known for its historic district with antique shops and boutiques. At the local Dairy Queen, the only restaurant my little guys can handle at the moment, I spied a middle-aged woman with the most beautiful long, blonde hair. It wasn’t platinum-blonde, in that past-my-prime-but-desperately-trying-to-fake-it way, but a natural blonde that was perfectly styled to go with her perfectly applied makeup.
I remember thinking that I don’t see many women her age who wear their hair that way, since it obviously requires a lot of time and attention, and then I realized that I was no longer in Austin.
(While I’m enjoying the holidays, I’m sharing some of my posts from my previous blog. I hope you enjoy them. This post is from December 2009, though Didion’s birthday is actually December 5th.)
Today is Joan Didion’s birthday, and I’ve been meaning to write a post about her ever since I re-read The Year of Magical Thinking a couple of months ago. I know that December is a difficult month for her, because that is when her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, first became sick from the illness that would eventually take her life, and also because December is when Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, died from a heart attack while Quintana was unconscious in the hospital. These tragic events led Didion to write The Year of Magical Thinking, an amazing book that would eventually earn her the National Book Award.
I re-read her book recently in anticipation of my own sad December, as the first anniversary of Babycake’s birth draws nearer and nearer. I was preparing myself for the inevitable sadness most new mothers feel as their babies turn one, but I was also afraid that memories of our birth experience would creep to the surface again, after I have worked so hard to get past them.
Didion’s writing is filled with a melancholy I haven’t come across often elsewhere. When I taught a college freshman composition class, the very first assignment of the semester was for my students to read her essay “On Going Home” and then write a descriptive piece of their own, recounting a memory from their pasts. I was always amazed by how personal and revealing these short writing assignments were, and how much these students, most of them fresh out of high school, were willing to share with me, a complete stranger. I can only think that Didion herself, with her honest glimpse into the world of her family’s home, was influential enough to allow these young writers to share their own struggles with drugs, alcoholism, and the deaths of loved ones in such a candid and honest way.
And so it was that I sought solace in her “magical thinking,” so to speak. As she attempted to process the loss of her husband while caring for her daughter, she reconstructed the events that led to his death and analyzed the moments they shared together in life. I guess I hoped to re-examine my own experiences, almost a year after the fact, to make sense of them, too.
Several years ago, before I read the book the first time, I listened to an interview with Didion on NPR’s show, Fresh Air, with Terry Gross, who is known for her ability to politely ask difficult questions with amazing sensitivity. I distinctly remember two points within the interview. One was when Gross asked Didion if, after examining the issue of death so closely, she was herself afraid to die. Didion responded that no, she wasn’t, because she wasn’t leaving anyone behind. At that point, she choked up, and Gross allowed her to take a break.
When the show came back on, Gross told Didion that the winner of the National Book Award had just been announced, and Gross was pleased and honored to say that the winner was, in fact, Didion. It was a great moment in an otherwise difficult interview, but the fact remained that the book would not have been written, and thus, the award not won, if Didion’s husband and daughter had not died.
I didn’t find what I was looking for with my second reading of The Year of Magical Thinking, and I found myself relieved with that realization. While I will always feel sadness about Babycake’s birth, I’ve found a sense of peace, and I’m looking forward to his birthday with great anticipation. I know that, even though I mourned for a long time, there was no death, and though my experience was transforming, it doesn’t begin to compare with the sadness of Didion’s December.
Today is Joan Didion’s birthday, and I hope she is able to celebrate it happily.
(While I’m enjoying the holidays, I’m sharing some of my posts from my previous blog. I hope you enjoy them. This post is from April 2012.)
Since we moved into our house six years ago, she has met me on my daily walks through the neighborhood. When I first spied her in the drainage ditch near my house, she shocked me a bit and I asked Ryan if he could see what I was seeing. We had a good laugh and went on our way, but now, all these years later, she’s become a fixture in our ordinary days, and I look for her as I round the corner after leaving the park with the boys. They are too young to really see her yet, but in time, I’m sure, she will come to fascinate them. Ryan calls her “Lola” (She was a showgirl), but I like to think of her in more artistic terms, and she reminds me a lot of the Venus of Willendorf, that ancient symbol of fertility and femininity.
I know that we are not the only ones to appreciate her beauty. Our little city has a very busy parks and recreation department, and any vandalism or criminal mischief is dealt with swiftly. If local pranksters graffiti the parks and sidewalks overnight, rest assured that the damage is quickly removed the next morning. But she remains steadfast, peeking out coyly from her hiding place at the edge of the little creek, and I’m pretty sure she has become more attractive with age, as if her artists, or those who love and care for her, have come back to touch up her makeup from time to time.
She was here before I was, and I love seeing her every day. I hope she will continue to endure for years and years, bringing a little bit of beauty to a quiet city street.
(The view of Venus on our walks.)
(A closeup of Venus.)
