On grooming. and usual update.

I curled my fingers into a ball, that protective impulse seen in the smallest of beloved insects: the roly poly. My unsightly nails were magnified by a projector onto a screen. We were reviewing two-step equations and there were my nails beside the problems - a chipped periwinkle polish, revealing yellow stains, and a thin line of dirt. Growing up, my brother would chide all the sisters about this habit. "That's so tacky. Clean your nails, geez!" He is fifteen years my elder and promoted cleanliness, good posture, and above all, life experience through handwork and calculated risk. Many years later, I still think of him when my polish chips.

It took me two weeks, and two more magnifications to clean them, trim them, file them, buff them, and happily apply two coats of oxblood red. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with chipped polish. And, yet, I'm sure it means something. My chipped nail polish is a symbol of my busy life. I have no time to care for myself in these small ways. I have no time to smooth out my wrinkled life and present it as refined, elegant, cultivated. I have no time to enjoy grooming my eyebrows, shaving my legs, maintaining my nails. And so, I am hairy and unkempt. There are worse things. I have confessed. I am free.

Grooming and cleanliness - I sense beneath it all we are asserting control, asserting an image. Our feeble fight for inner peace and against chaos, busyness, judgments, and expectations by applying a four coats of polish (one base coat, two color, one top coat).  I know the world is not divided into mutually exclusive choices, but, alas, it is too much to keep up with. I didn't shower for two days straight. I accept the chaos and grimaces with a glass of wine and platter of cheese and a sleepy, lazy morning. I'd rather have those. I have confessed. I am free. And when there is time for grooming and cleaning, I will do those with pleasure.

***

My nails are chipping again. It's okay. I was a lot of dishes. We have no dishwasher. We are the dishwashers. Today we slept in until 8:15a and didn't get up until 8:45a. We moved slowly, laughing at our reluctance to get up, at our sluggish pace. Rudy arrived to work on time. With all our happy plodding, we've never been late. We attribute these miracles of promptness to a fortuitous, unseen twilight zone. It is crazy, we laugh.

I finished Sylvia's correspondence from 1952-1963, published by her mother. The woman was erratic and tirelessly optimistic. She felt things deeply. She was sure of her talent and was always sending out manuscripts, persistent in the face of rejection. She planned for her rich, fruitful future. She confided these plans to those closest her. How could she meet such an end when she approached life with such brave, resilient hope? I love Sylvia. Her end grieves me. Her life and work stir me. To think, (to always think!), she is one person in the history of the overpopulated, ever-growing world! I am mystified by suffering and hope and the decision to live and by the Sylvias who teeter between it all.

Cheers to grooming out of pleasure, rather than fearful impulse.
Cheers to happy plodding.
Cheers to the twilight zone.
Cheers to all those who teeter bravely.