Thursday Essay

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I signed up for journalist Ann Helen Peterson’s newsletter a while ago; each week has a “just trust me” link with no explanation. This week’s link was an essay by Victoria Gannon about working as a contract UX writer in San Francisco. It is wonderful and awful and captures exactly what being an outsider at a mostly male company feels like (see also: Pixar’s “Purl“).

From “The Metrics of Backpacks“:

I am in a foreign country; these are my hosts. I study their dialects and graph their inflections, seeking fluency. I listen as they discuss fishing trips and ways to get their wives to watch science-fiction movies and how annoyed they get when she eats their leftover burrito from the fridge. I offer up pieces of my own life that I think they will like: stories of my boyfriend’s obsessive CD collection, memories of the science-fiction movies my brother made me watch as a child. I too cringed at the green of the Emperor’s blood in Flash Gordon; I also sat in awe when the owl in Clash of the Titans moved its brass wings. But this is belonging by proxy, a male escort at my side; it is never inherent.

Wednesday Poem

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This is a good one. Maybe because I want a dog, maybe because I’m realizing grief is just…going to stay with me. And that will be OK. (We will be OK…eventually.)

 

Talking To Grief
by Denise Levertov

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don’t know you’ve been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

It’s Monday

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Sit on it like it’s a pile of fabric you want to cut out today:

(I took a day off at the last minute–time to put red thread in the serger and sew!)

Friday Links

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1. It’s Easter weekend, which will be a hard end to a hard week (Mom was the one in our family with faith; she loved Easter and spring and brunch and getting her adult children something for their “basket”). We’re not celebrating–we decided as a family to take a year off from celebrating anything–but I am making a quiche and listening to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.

2. There is a new collection of Oliver Sacks essays out, including this one on “The Healing Power of Gardens.” If the weather holds, maybe I’ll get some yard work in, too.

Spring, Trees

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Not to be too Anne Shirley, but part of what made this house the winner in the year-long house hunt is that there are so many big trees in the neighborhood. I was looking out the window at them yesterday–the first sunny day after days of rain–and thought of this quote from A Moveable Feast:

 

“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life…But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.”

Make Nine 2019: The Other Sweatshirt

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Here’s the third thing on the Make Nine list for this year: a sweatshirt in fabric that I indigo dyed back in 2017. (No post about the dyeing but you can see Oliver sitting on it here).

 

After the last sweatshirt, I switched patterns to the Sloane by Named Patterns and it was everything I wanted: high neck, great fit through the shoulders, and those long French darts to add a little something. (Thanks to @threadsnips on Instagram for the suggestion!)

I’ve heard the drafting on Named Patterns praised before; I’d say it’s justified because I’m happy with the fit straight from the envelope. It’s also a really fast sew–this was done in a weekend.

I know the indigo will fade but right now it’s the perfect Bob Ross phthalo blue, so of course I had to pair it with some yellow ochre pants (from Everlane).

Thinking Of Paris

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Yesterday was a hard day anyway and then to watch Notre-Dame burn just made it harder. Mom and I went to Paris together in 2006; it’s still one of my favorite memories.

Here’s Olivier Latry, one of the Notre-Dame organists, playing a version of La Marseillaise (from a service after the 2015 terror attacks).

Happy Birthday To My Mom

By in birthdays, fuck cancer

It would have been my mom’s 71st birthday today; it’s nearly three months to the day since she died.

I knew intellectually going into this year that it would be hard–we would mark these holidays and most likely she wouldn’t be here for them. But living a hard truth is exponentially more painful than just knowing it.

There is so much that hurts because she’s missing it, and so much to be angry about: she didn’t see Skyler grow up, or her 50th anniversary, or my wedding, or even her garden waking up for the spring. She took such good care of herself; how can people who eat McDonald’s every day and never exercise be alive, and she can be gone? So much anger.

But–and this is the hardest thing to live with–there is nothing we can do about it. She’s gone. We can be angry at what she’s missing or we can remember everything she was here for (sometimes we do both). She got to see me with a career, with a house, with Doc, and starting therapy. She got to see her son marry and meet her grandson and make memories with him. She had 46 years with my dad, full of partnership and respect and love.

She left us with so much: what she knew about flowers and cats and loving people, what she knew about style and art, random pronouncements over the years that come back to me. I know she wouldn’t want me to be bitter so I try to focus on those things instead of the colossal unfairness of her death.

It’s hard. It’s so hard. But she did so many hard things–she did the hardest thing–and she did them gracefully and beautifully. I owe it to her to do the same.

Happy birthday, Mom. I love you.

Friday Links

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1 I have never felt so seen nor so alarmed at being seen than when I read this piece from Danny Ortberg (from the late lamented The Toast): “My Clean Floor” And The Battles You’re Only Aware Of Once You’ve Lost

When did I become The House Noticer? Walk past the fridge, register idly There are thumbprints on the handle. Gotta clean them off. Crumbs in the vegetable drawer, too; someone’s going to have to lift them out with a damp paper towel. And the Pledge gets the dust off the kitchen table but it doesn’t do a thing about the water-glass rings, so someone’s going to have to find out what does that. Are any of the bath mats damp? Wait for the afternoon light to come in the windows so you can see just how not-really-clean all the surfaces really are, giving the lie to the idea that you live in a world filled with order and sense. The house has a secret language all for you, and the last thing in the world it wants is for you to share that language with someone–anyone–else.

 

2. There’s a roundup of the best “home pants” on Man Repeller. I would argue that the truly best ones are Hudson Pants that you sew out of sweatshirt fleece and savings, but I love that the concept is getting discussed.

3. From McSweeney’s: Things I Wish My Therapist Would Say To Me But She Never Does. Accurate.

 

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