We sat down on the porch the other evening and realized we didn't have anything to worry about.
Let's rephrase that--there's always something to worry about. Things like climate change or politics or the nagging feeling that you've squandered your life pursuing things that don't really matter. What I mean is that we suddenly realized there was no ultimately trifling but in the moment pressing business that had to be done the next 24 hours or so, no petitions to be filed, no phone calls to make, no appointments to be arranged. After nearly two years if you want to pull at the roots of the thing, we were done with a major project.
We'd built a house. (Had a house built.)
We were all moved in, and we'd even hung (most of) the art that we are going to hang.
We were free--and at loose ends.
What did we used to do? she wanted to know. Before we started plotting this move, divesting ourselves of extraneous stuff, picking out backsplashes and light fixtures, worrying about selling the old house? How did we live back then?
What did we do before we got so busy?
I couldn't answer then, but maybe I can now. I think we were always busy, and that whatever we were doing seemed as important and consuming in the moment as the past couple of years have seemed. I think we have always rushed and plotted and hoped and batted back disappointment with new and better plans. I think we are like those sharks who must constantly remain in motion or else drown.
That is why, when there is nothing else to do, she will take to her piano or find a heavy book and good light or pin up her hair and go out for a bike or a run or a swim. This is why she flips open her laptop to check for airfares to places I haven't considered. Always thinkin', she says. And she is.
This is why we load up on Saturday afternoons and head off to unlikely festivals and agricultural museums where we look at lethal old tractors and feed our terriers watermelon. Why we stand in the dry heat of an old cotton gin with a hint of charred wood in the air and these Proustian tobacco farm memories come flooding back. I have ancestral recollections of places like this; my people worked in them, in overalls and swelter, near ripping gears and threshers.
My mother is in Alaska this week, on a cruise. She works an iPad and promises to post photos to Facebook. She rode to school down a dirt road on the back of a mule.
Karen's story is different in the details, but overall the same trajectory. Her father was first-generation American--Yanko answered to "John"--and eschewed most ethnic signifiers. The goal was to become more American, to escape the strictures of Old Europe, to acquire, as he eventually did, a foothold in a promised land, the normality of a weedless lawn and a four-bedroom suburban tract house.
And now we have curated tastes, and a few fine things. Real art on our walls.
I know why we cannot rest. It is because we cannot trust our good fortune, because we have seen bad things befall good people and because we know--though we don't talk about--how fast the whole thing passes and how provisional it sometimes feels. There's not a day when I don't wonder if and how it will all be taken away from me. I have thought about plans B, C and D; I have packed a bug-out bag for us. We have some cash on hand. If we have to, we can trade it all in on a second-hand RV and tramp around the country. I could work in a pro shop.
But I don't want to. So I keep coming in the newsroom on Sunday mornings, grinding away, putting word after word after word.
I am aware that, left to my own devices, I could lapse into indolence. I could drink whiskey every night. I could watch nonstop sports on TV or be sucked into the minutiae of any number of silly pop events. I haven't succumbed but I well understand how someone could be sucked into the alternative realities the digital world makes possible. I like to move around but I am susceptible to sedentary distractions.
But Karen is incapable of lolling upon a couch, paying scant attention to flashing lights and noise, unless she is truly exhausted and soon asleep. And then she crashes for a few hours, to wake up alert and scanning the world for possibility.
So we always have projects. There is always work to be done. Always a deadline to focus one's concentration. Time is not an infinite resource.
So we always have that to worry about.
What this rare moment represents is a kind of fleeting clarity when you realize what you have put behind you and think about how far you've come. Moments when you begin to realize what you are starting to take for granted, that other people might regard you as a card-carrying adult member of society who can be called upon to make a certain contribution to the common good. And you might wonder how that happened--little by little and then all at once?
It was just a little while ago we were in high school, snickering at the square staidness of our parents' lives.
Now it is hard for me to imagine how they ever made it, with the pressures and limitations they must have felt. How they raised families in times that were just as uncertain as our own. How they dealt with grief and disappointment while never undermining the sense of security and wantedness their children enjoyed.
How did we make it here to this blue lawn? Regardless of how much we like to think of ourselves as self-made, not alone.
And so we sit on the porch with glasses of wine and wonder what's next.
I'm working on a book, almost finished (which means not nearly finished), and another one planned after that. As always she'll be my first and primary editor. She has columns of her own to write now, her process is not dissimilar to mine but she writes much faster, with a directness and purpose I envy. She's dipped back into yoga; we're riding bicycles now.
The mail is being forwarded, the utilities are all set up for auto-pay. We might need to shop for a stick or two of furniture but that can wait. We can just sit here for a moment, with the western sky painted rose and yellow, with glasses of box plonk in our hands.
"Tomorrow is another day," some redhead once said. Tomorrow we get back to work.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 06/25/2019