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Aug
31
Becoming Practical
Filed Under Ruminations
I just want to know one thing: When did I become so practical?
That was my waking thought this morning. When did I forget the way to the fiction section, even though I passed it every time on my way to the self-help books? When did I start buying black pants and multi-colored tops because they “go with everything”? When did I start defining the perfect pocketbook as one that opens at the top and has a place for everything allowing quick, easy access at the checkout counter?
This morning while getting dressed, I looked over at our practical, white, quick-flushing toilet and wondered why didn’t I just paint the damn thing. As I loaded my backpack (the one that has lots of nifty slots allowing me to carry all my treasures in one bag), I wondered how the morning would go if I took nothing but my Barnes and Noble discount card and a credit card. No cell phone, no insurance and Medicare cards, no powers-of-attorney, no computer – just 2 teensy little cards.
I’ve come to covet my children’s things. Yes, I know the consequences for coveting, but they have such amazing good taste in interior and exterior decorating. They take after my mother. My daughter buys all these fandabulous light fixtures – prisms hanging down all over the place, sexy red globes, severely modern chrome and glass. She boldly paints her kitchen a delicious red and the wall behind the fireplace in a textured silver. My boy sets his pottery bowls all around (learning a touch of practicality the hard way, he now putties them down to the tabletops before parties) and covers his apartment in candles appropriately, alluringly placed. And he LIGHTS the candles - how impractical is that? They are just going to burn down and he’ll have to throw them away and go get more.
I visit my kids and come home vowing to be more like them, to put out my few precious goodies, but before the end of the week I’m moving everything back to the boxes so I won’t have so much stuff to dust.
I can remember going to a store and buying a single top. That’s it: one single top. And I bought it just because I liked it. Didn’t worry about what I was going to wear it with. Didn’t waste my time trying to match it up to something in the store. Didn’t wonder how often I’d really wear it. I just bought it, brought it home, and enjoyed wearing it with a host of different things, grabbing a different ensemble every time I went out the door.
I look at people now and see them wearing baby blue pants with a sunshine yellow t-shirt, and I wonder how they ever came to put those two pieces together. I’ve turned into a basic-black-with-a-colorful-jacket girl. Simple. Easy. Draws the eyes up away from my hips, I justify to myself. And as if that’s not enough, it allows me to travel with an amazingly small suitcase: two basic black pants, two basic black tops, and three or four different colored jacket-type tops and that’s it.
Not too long ago I decided it made more sense to just keep my cosmetics and toiletries in the travel bag and work from that. So much more practical than taking them out and putting them in the drawers then taking them from the drawers and putting them in the travel bag. Moxiegirl (my daughter) carries this humongous makeup bag with more brushes than Leonardo owned in a lifetime. I don’t own a single makeup brush. You have to wash brushes out after using them and carefully dry them in a way that protects and preserves the bristles or suffer a dusting of eye shadow on everything else in the bag. Too impractical.
My chiclets buy trendy, fun furniture. I purchase something that will last forever. Not that I necessarily want it to, mind you, it just makes sense.
My mother-in-law appreciated practicality. And a clean house. I picked right up on that and began to oblige. Is that when I became practical? Was it kindled by a desire to have my mother-in-law look favorably upon me? To find me worthy of her favorite son?
To counter the sadness of this acquired practicality, I recently marched right up to the food counter here at Barnes and Noble and ordered a toffee-almond bar AND a bag of potato chips. I did. Of course I did also argue with myself over the chips. “What will people think?” “How balanced is this?” “Why can’t you just get one of those sandwiches – that makes more sense.” That last one is the one that motivated my hand to reach out and snag that bag of chips, accompanied by my practiced voice of justification saying “The salt will balance out the sweetness.”
Nearby there’s a mean-sounding woman talking loudly and harshly to a young child. “You can’t have that book,” she says to the young girl, “it’s too hard for you.” Yeah, sure, I want to say. That’s what all the publishers told J. K. Rowling about the Harry Potter books. And to think that moments before I’d watched that young girl come out of the bathroom eating an ice cream cone – yes, an ice cream cone in the bookstore – and wondered what kind of mother would let a child come into a bookstore eating ice cream.
What kind of mother. Now there’s a phrase that’s been around for a good little while. Talk about being judgmental. What kind of mother would let her daughter leave the house looking like that? (impractical) What kind of mother would let her child bring potato sticks and peanut butter cookies to school? (impractical and unhealthy) What kind of mother would let her child wear red polka dots with chartreuse plaid? (Something impractical - that’s what the mother was obviously doing instead of washing clothes.)
Are my children so delightfully “impractical” as a form of rebellion against my practical ways? Do they know how much I encourage them? How much I want them to always be impractical?
Moxiegirl indulges her senses. She sleeps on silk sheets. (I tried that once and found that sliding off onto the floor throughout the night was – you guessed it – impractical.) (Not to mention hard on the body.) She spends more on soaps and skin potions than most people spend on their monthly mortgage. (Back when we were first married – back in our impractical days – hubby and I decided we preferred the scent of Irish Spring soap over the Ivory we’d grown up with. Now, some 34 years later, you’ll still find that bar of green soap with white striations throughout in the adhesive-backed soap dispeser – the practical one with that allows the soap to drain out the bottom.) Years ago Mox bought a convertible - a bright candy apple red one. (At least I was never so practical as to let hubby and Monkeyboy talk me into driving a minivan, preferring my station wagons and more recently my suv’s instead. I can haul a lot of people and a lot of things in my previously-owned Range Rover.)
Monkeyboy is launching a t-shirt company. An aspiring actor launching a t-shirt company. How practical is that? And yet I’m helping him, any way I can, cheering him on every chance I get. Even offered to loan him money so he can offer female shirts right out of the gate without having to build up the capital.
Like any muscle that’s not been used in a good little while, the impractical part of me has atrophied almost slap dab out of existence. You lift weights and do exercises (or clean your house ’cause that’s much more practical movement) to restore weak muscles, so I’ve hatched me a practical plan to build up my impracticality: I’m wrapping Mason jars with thread. I can hear you now saying “WHAT?????”
And that’s just the reaction I’m after.
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You send wonderful cards to friends and family and always remember gift occasions nicely–how practical is that? You have eclectic furnishing, a castle door, and a shower that looks ready for countdown–how practical is that? You are generous with time and money to those who are important to you and you support your children’s impractical ways–how practical is that?
So you do some practical things . . . for balance. Ya wanna do something practical? Get off your own case!!