I am currently dealing with an upper respiratory infection that has moved on microbially, but has rendered me voiceless. Laryngitis. I can make guttural noises that resemble words, but it all sounds like the by-product of an unholy merging of the vocal stylings of Rose Marie, Brenda Vacarro, Suzanne Pleshette and Harvey Firestein. Family and friends love this forced silence, meaning they can get a word in edgewise, but make no mistake, I am taking my current aphasia out on my keyboard.
While trying to remain quiet yesterday, I decided to do the most dumb ass thing in the world: I looked up old boyfriends and old colleagues. After a few boyfriend inquiries I got bored. I guess I’ve moved on…
BUT….
I’m not so emotionally evolved that I couldn’t pass up the chance to check out the people I was knew, tolerated, liked, and considered to be a friend, even though we were forced upon each other thanks to a work or collegiate environs. In the real world, we would never have known each other. And that’s okay. Life is like a trellis and we are the vines, forever trying to climb upward, or at least, that’s what we should be doing.
And nothing can remind us more of all that we haven’t done or become or accomplished or faced, quite like looking at an old acquaintance’s life through FACEBOOK eyes. Yes dear friends, this is the new millennium’s version of beer goggles.
I dropped out of the whole FB scene in early January. I got tired of the ‘look at me/notice me” effort that I was making and that so many people yearning for their eight and half minutes of fame.
It used to be 15 minutes, but with the sequester and all…
Anyway, I found a women I once knew a lifetime ago. Thanks to blogs, a few podcasts, FB, My Space and a few articles, I was able to glean together what her life has been like in the absence of our friendship. Hers has not skipped a beat. And really, I didn’t expect it to.
She came from money and because water, they say, always seeks its own level, she married money. And her wealth isn’t that storied old money kind…you know, with longtime family friends named Bitsy, Roth, Barren and India who all look like they stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad shot at Martha’s Vineyard. Well healed and well wheeled. Trust fund babies who knew how to eat lobster and use finger bowls while the rest of the infantile worlds was still making uncoordinated jabs at cold Spaghetti O’s laid across the tray table of a high chair. No, not this woman. To be more succinct, she came from new money and she married new money and she is what I can only describe as a “contained version of being over the top” in everything she does. Does that make sense? Not quite Phyllis Diller, but not Grace Kelly either. She takes chances with texture,color and style in ways I couldn’t.
Or wouldn’t.
Based on what I read; on what I saw, she seems to consistently makes eclectic choices that go beyond my comfort zone. And mind you, I’m not such a fashion backwards kind of broad. Not all that long ago, I used to have and yes, used to wear, a mini dress patterned just like the Partridge Family’s bus. It made me look as wide as one, but dammit, I took chances in my own way, but this woman and her bevy of friends make me look like a piker.
And why shouldn’t she? Why wouldn’t they? she…they…are much younger than me, if memory serves, she’s in her 40′s now, she has children and still ridiculously pretty. That Patrician profile of hers gives way to a face that is Hollywood gorgeous. She’s genetically gifted with symmetry. But somewhere along the way, since getting married and birthing, she became someone who I no longer recognize. In articles, she frequently drones on applying the adjectives such as glam and fashionista in everyday affect. Then, there’s the insertion of yummy, delish and fab to describe clothing or decor. Bracelets are fun. How about a kicky pair of earrings? I was waiting to read the word jaunty in her description of a set of tea towels.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a very decent woman and there’s nothing wrong with her parlance. She is kind, considerate and generous as the day is long, but it was obvious the day we met, that yes, we had similar backgrounds, but experienced them very differently.
When we knew each other, we only spoke of that which we had in common, which wasn’t much, but enough to keep a relationship in developmental stage. As sophisticated as I thought I was, I always felt like a pretentious hayseed around her. She knew about Maxim’s; I partied in a field with cases of beer or keggers, and peed next to piles of cow dung and cactus. As a child, she was reading all about Captain Horatio Hornblower while I was grappling with Captain Kangaroo. She traveled extensively all of her life and even lived abroad on several different continents on several different occasions, courtesy of Daddy’s largess. She was fearless in her pursuit of life as she wanted to live it, not really giving a damn about anything else. I respected that. And I respected her. For all her abundant wealth, she was still a very real person, who just happened to be very lovely and kind, as well.
God’s trifecta. I would eventually learn a lot about that in my life.
When I was a Freshman at the University of Texas, I lived in a lovely all woman’s dormitory. The place was rife with sorority types. In fact, my floor’s RA was textbook Greek. Pony tail with a bow, Anne Klein Espadrilles, painter’s pants and corresponding striped rugby shirt. Our first meeting on move-in day consisted of her telling us how accessible she will always be and how she loves to celebrate the holidays and when any girl on her floor gets “pinned” or “lavaliered”.
What the f— was she talking about??????
I came from a small town in South Texas. We were practically Neanderthal back then. A guy called dibs on the girl of his choice by giving her his Jr/Sr class ring and/or his letterman jacket providing he was worth a damn in football. I knew nothing of the Panhellenic ways and means. Consequently, I stuck out like a sore thumb on that floor, in that dorm. These women were all from wealthy families who called Dallas or Houston home. Most were nice, some were snobs and all were pretty and thin and put together. They could come down for breakfast wearing their hair up, sans makeup, in over sized T-shirts and sweats and still look like a hundred bucks. There was an ease about them that only affluence gives. Poise, perhaps… confidence, for sure, but at age 18 in 1977, they had what I didn’t. I so wanted to be like them, but I wasn’t and I was so sorry for not being up to par in my mind. They were worthy of the good life. Chubby match girls with a decent vocabularies don’t.
Waaaah.
Later on as I finished up my collegiate matriculation, I worked in the fine china and crystal department of a retail store in Austin, where I watched women walk in and spend more than I made in a week to buy Waterford wine goblets. They were grown versions of those girls from my Freshman year and I still allowed them to get to me. I remember one day going back to the stockroom and swore to myself in a soliloquy befitting Scarlet O’Hara that someday, that I too would buy Waterford goblets and decanters and all the other retail niceties that represent fine living and I would strew them effortlessly throughout my home.
That memory made me laugh, even as I sat at my desk, reading about my long-lost associate, tweezing out post-menopausal whiskers from my chin(s). That’s when I realized that I was happy for her. I really was. If there was ever a shred of jealousy anywhere in my core of emotions it had vanished, which of course, confused me, because that normally would have been my initial reaction reading about the fabulous life of this member of the “mommies who lunch” set. Wonder of wonders, I had evolved somewhere along the way. This is her life and in that existence, she is who she is. She speaks several languages, watches foreign films and has memories of attending boarding school in Switzerland. I can, if properly inebriated, order beer and nachos in Spanish. I have seen “La Bamba” once or twice and I went to cheerleading camp for a week my Freshman year of High School.
She orders expensive French Diptyque candles for grins while the rest of the world, hears that and thinks it’s what a hair-lip would call that long, thin metal thing you pull out of your engine to check oil levels.
I am who I am, nuff said. I am fine with my aging process. If she’s happy, great. I feel she has to be well aware that her situation is rare–the woman isn’t stupid, but I couldn’t notice how vapid her life had become after counting 21 full body shots of her reflection in a closet mirror and said closet was so large, condors surely had to be nesting in their somewhere. And this was simply for a pair of earrings. I would never have seen that side of her all those years ago. I would never have allowed myself to see her as anything other than who I thought I needed to be. Pretty, wealthy, thin…worthy. I would have coveted her life. Her daring fashion sense, her face, her metabolism. She can afford not to work while being able to afford silly things like Judith Leiber crystal studded compacts, just because she wants one. If her bright, shiny new penny life consists of a nanny, a housekeeper, a gardener, boutique shopping, kitschy dining at the latest Boho eatery, and having enough couture de la Renta on hand to pack it all in a trunk as she heads to Bangkok for a week with her two young daughters simply because one was jonesin’ for some authentic good Thai Pad, then wonderful, great, stellar.
Atta girl.
But what I now know and what tool me forever to figure out, is that her life is hers and despite all outward appearances, it’s really not what I have deigned for myself during the quiet hours of my youth when the day was done, but Morpheus was late his sleep inducing ministrations. I would love to jersey hither and yon, but at 54′ the sense of urgency has waned a bit. There was a time when I would have wanted that Country Club membership and to be a part of that lunch crowd with enough disposable income to buy place settings for 12 in expensive Christmas, Thanksgiving AND Easter bone china.
With matching table runners.
There was a time when I would have loved to have loved opera, but it never really appealed to me. I know who the Sisters Bronte and Jane Eyre are but, have I ever read their books? No. Poetry leaves me cold (the Nantucket chronicles not withstanding). Camus leaves me completely and I do my best to stay away from Cervantes. Dickens, too. Perhaps I am a literary and social hick, but at least I’m no longer grappling with that fact. I am who I am, with what I am and comfy with what I’m not. And I will no longer apologize for the directions I’ve taken in my life. What I’ve done is not who I am. That also applies to WHO I’ve done. Finding self absolution is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
I highly recommend its anesthetic powers.
Well kids, be that as it may, I can tell you that a few months ago, I made good on my promise and bought several Waterford crystal decanters, replete with sterling bottle necklaces indicating which one contains the Scotch, the Whiskey, the Vodka and the Bourbon. They now grace my newly designed bar and yes, they look imperial.
As I purchased my prizes, I wondered if I had somehow, after all these years, finely acquired that style, ease and grace that I witnessed in women of privilege so many times before. I wonder how I must have looked to some other big dreamin’ neophyte of life, hoping to break free of whatever societal or emotional shackles she felt held her back. If so, I wondered how she processed it when I had to admit to the cashier that I only had enough money to buy four of the five decanters.
Lucky for me, most yard sale hosts are good about their willingness to break up a set.
