Pink of Perfection

A few weeks ago, I was craving comfort in a big way. I was getting over a lingering summer cold, and feeling neither interested nor able to deal with grown-up problems. I plucked Anne of Avonlea off the shelf, and for as long as I was flipping through those very old and faded rough-edged hardback pages, I did feel comforted. Anne’s is not a world in which she wonders about the meaning in her life. Meaning is as sure and tangible a thing as Marilla’s plum jam. The questions instead are how to extract oneself when you’ve fallen through the roof of a chicken coop and what to name a particularly enchanting place in the woods. There are scrapes, to be sure, but Anne snakes her way out of them.

I love ambiguity, questioning and grays, of course. But there is something deeply appealing to me about simpler worlds where families eat dinner together every night, self-worth and love are givens, and humans are replaced by bears and anteaters.

After turning the last page on Anne, I took myself to Books of Wonder and reacquainted myself with old friends like Mrs. Frisby and Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I pulled aside several different teenage female clerks and asked for recommendations based on my love of spunky, fierce heroines like Anastasia and Laura. They introduced me to Mary Alice and Sheila the Great.

I shelved Joan Didion and Annie Dillard. Enough darkness, rumination, and underbelly. I parted the curtains to let in some light. And in these last very happy weeks of time spent at reading level age 10 and up, I’ve learned that when life feels a bit clouded and the way is unclear, these scrappy young heroines remind me of everything I need to know. Adventure is where you find it. Smart girls are cool. Being kind is more important than being beautiful. Work for good. Follow your passions. Love yourself and love with another will follow. But in the meantime, we’ve got bigger fish to fry, like learning to write novels, befriending old ladies in stone houses, and finding our home on the prairie, our dreams in the tall sea grasses.

So, friends: I’ve got Anne of the Island on its way from a used bookstore in Michigan. A Wrinkle in Time is in the queue, and when it gets chillier, I plan to read through all the Little House books. What are your favorites? What childhood books do you visit again and again? Which heroines taught you what kind of woman you want to be?

Since I came back home from vacation, I’ve been a bit obsessed with transforming our living room into more of a paradise (going away tends to seed grand ideas like this, have you noticed?). I’ve picked out a couch (just can’t decide if we need a chaise on one end), and am planning to recover two chairs with very simple white slipcovers. They are improvements that will likely total in the hundreds of dollars, but when it comes to making a house a comfy home, they seem well worth it.

As I was sharing all this yesterday with a friend, getting her thoughtful nods of approval, I asked if she had other ideas. You know, fresh solutions for my same old spatial problems. Her eyes traveled around the room.

“Is the printer usually on the floor?”

“Oh, um, no.”

“Maybe you could move it.” She looked around more. “And what are all those cords under your desk?”

“Well, I don’t know really.”

“Maybe you could corral them? I bet you could do it in an hour. Use some twisty-ties.”

At first I thought she wasn’t quite playing along with my game. After all, I meant big, sweeping, grand changes, like totally rearranging the furniture, not piddly, organizational tasks like moving the waffle iron and abandoned picture frames from the tops of the bookshelves. But then I realized, of course, that my eyes had grown accustomed to certain unpolished, cluttered bits in my apartment; getting those in ship-shape might have as much as an effect as a big white couch, and for a lot less dough.

In fact, I’ve hated the jumble of cords under the desk that snake out into the floor space beyond since we moved into this apartment twelve million years ago. Why had I just come to accept this eyesore?

It took only thirty minutes to corral those cords. Nevermind that I broke the internet in the process and am typing this on stolen wifi. It’s well worth it. Thirty minutes for one small corner of peace of mind. And eventually I’ll figure out how to get our internet back up and running. Here’s hoping. (I believe this is what Gretchen Rubin calls in The Happiness Project a “boomerang errand”––one completed task that supplies you with a new, fresh to-do. Lovely.)

So why is it so hard to get going on these little tasks? They drive us absolutely nuts and yet finding thirty minutes to empty out a drawer or deal with a mountainous pile of mail seems as difficult as finding the time and money for a two week vacation in Fiji. But the results, oh, the sweet results. The pay-off is so much greater than what you have to put in to get ‘er done. So why does it feel so insurmountable sometimes? What are the little annoyances around the house causing you to lose your mind? And what would it really take––in terms of money and time––to make them pleasing again?

print for sale on etsy

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. ––Agnes Repplier

I’m not usually one to share the bizarro holidays that pop up on the calendar, but this is one I couldn’t resist. Today is Lazy Day, the kind of holiday I can really get behind. That we are in the dog days of summer, the kind that almost feel like a rut, makes it even more apropos. Who wants to do more on August 10 than sip a glass of iced tea, anyway?

When I was in college, a speaker came and gave a talk in the little chapel about the importance of leisure. I didn’t know then what real day-in, day-out work looked like, so I’m surprised what he said so affected me I had to scribble it down in my notebook: we reveal ourselves in our leisure as much as our work. The idea that downtime could somehow play a role in identity––that leisure could somehow be important––was an intoxicating idea to me. And now that I have daily work that consists of slightly more than “Read this novel; think about it; write paper; meet someone for coffee,” it’s an idea I can appreciate even more.

Especially after coming off such a fun weekend. My daily life is so much in my head: sitting, writing, writing, sitting. But this weekend on a bare Iowa horizon, I was in my heart and my body. Dancing, sweating, swimming. Smiling like a goon, and laughing till I ached. It made me think about physical fun, about being present in form, fully inhabited. Not talking it out, not analyzing, but relaxing into the summer heat, twirling skirts on the dance floor, leaning in for a kiss.

Which, of course, has nothing to do with being lazy. But it does have to do with fun. The pure, unadulterated bliss of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. And that feels related to a holiday about kicking back and doing nothing at all: il bel far niente.

And yet, I’m a little embarrassed of the word lazy. I certainly don’t want to be seen as such, despite how well I can nap and spend the better part of an hour in the bathtub. I’ve been known to wile whole Saturdays away in bed. But lazy seems so judgy; perhaps it’s just my Puritan roots shining through. I’ll be doing my best today to shirk off any ancestral guilt and find an hour to just sit and stare out a window. Consider this your invitation to join me.

image via LIFE

I can’t tell you how good it feels to be back here.

There are some vacations that see you crying on the plane when it’s time to come home, the ones that open up, as my friend said a couples of years ago, “a vortex of disappointment in your life.”

And then there are the ones from which you return eager to slip into your own bed, to flip through magazines to find new dinner possibilities, to settle into the couch that’s your own. Vacation begins to feel heavy (maybe it’s all the red meat and ice cream). And rather than feel pinned down by the prospect of settling back in to your daily routines, the day-in day-out of living as you do, you feel quite happy to return to them. The refrigerator vegetable drawer. The walk to the gym. The hiss of the coffee pot in the morning, and the quiet turning down of the house at night.

This is one of my favorite by-products of vacation: that we’re able to get that rare perspective on our lives, and to feel rested enough to want to reshape them in new ways. Vacation reminded me of how much I love fancy lunches, and how badly I need to reinstate them. Vacation introduced me to new flavors, and made me––for what I think is the first time in a long time––excited about cooking. Not the rote mechanics of getting dinner on the table, but the artistic fun of experimenting with recipes and embracing the unknown.

And perhaps most of all, vacation reminded me of a lost love. We were hosted with so much generosity and thought by Sebastian’s best friend. Greeted with gift bags and sparkling wine. Drawn maps. Served endless cuts of meat. Months ago, at my last dinner party, I walked into the kitchen and cursed everything. The guests. The meal. My freakin’ 900 degree kitchen. I had become the kind of host that, well, I hate. The one that’s lost sight of the joy and generosity of providing the occasion for loved ones to put on their party clothes, talk about their favorite books, drink too much and confess things they’ll regret in the morning. At the risk of embarrassing our host terribly, he does this all beautifully, all while still managing to cook the kind of meals that make the heart sigh and head spin.

In this way, vacation made me come back to my own life wanting to make it more vibrant. To not so blithely take for granted the people and things I’ve wanted my whole life to have and now, miraculously, do. And to open my doors again, to my home and even to this site, and remember the delight of inviting people in and having them stay awhile.

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray, where nature heals and give strength to body and soul alike. ––John Muir

Yesterday I attended a Quaker meeting in a deep shaded grove. It was what some call a “popcorn meeting,” where, one after another, people spring from their seats to quote from poetry and conversations with therapists. And in the moments of quiet that came in between bursts, I listened to the forests sounds with my eyes closed or watched the way the sunlight came through the trees. One serious conclusion: I use the adjective “heavenly” far too colloquially.

There was a through-line to the talk: about the delicacy of feelings and the power of words to hurt or to heal. I had spent the previous week in my own feverish ways, annoyed, anxious, unable to concentrate. But there in the woods, I felt reclothed in my rightful mind. I remembered the importance of stepping out of the flurry of the day-to-day to stop and breathe. To sit in quiet. To experience fellowship. Why hadn’t I been going to yoga? Why hadn’t I taken the time to sit in the community garden? I knew both would reset my clock, but I just couldn’t find the time. I had stewing to do and worries to fret. Important stuff.

Simplicity is something I struggle with. My apartment tends toward clutter; with language, I often have trouble being plain. So much of what we say is for effect and response, to get a laugh or to seem smart. But someone is always on the receiving end of that talk, perhaps sadly so. I resolved there to think more carefully of how what I say affects others. Words, especially written ones, aren’t just play things. As Joan Didion says, “Writers are always selling somebody out.” Tread carefully.

Someone at meeting used the phrase “beauty is but a light switch away.” Morning googling has revealed this to be some kind of cruel pick-up line, but in the context of chirping woodland birds and senior citizens in chinos, I had interpreted it so differently: We only have to flip the switch to be bathed in beauty. Just as, we only have to shift our perspective to feel peaceful and accepting again. Sometimes that means sitting quietly in the woods or floating in a lake or having a glass of lemonade with someone you love. What I had forgotten is how utterly within my power it is to bring those feelings about in my daily life, and I know just how to do it. Sometimes we need only a gentle reminder of what we already know.

On Friday evening I packed up a picnic of cold tuna macaroni salad and watermelon and boarded an evening train bound for Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley. We arrived in the dark and drank cold glasses of vinho verde before falling asleep. But in the morning, we awoke to a a town filled with red brick buildings and ringed by green mountains in the distance. We ate breakfast outside in the sprawling garden of a restaurant where they roast their own coffee beans and sell peanut butter chocolate chip cookies the size of your head. From there, we visited the kind of huge, creaky used bookstore that can only exist off rural highways, and here we get to the first point I want to make: of course I had to buy the book you see here the moment I saw it, even if it hadn’t cost $1.50. Please note the sentence at the top of the cover.

I got a little carried away at this book store, snatching up an M.F.K. Fisher book I didn’t have, a Joan Didion novel I’ve long wanted to read, and a cookbook that caused a staggering library fine the last time it was in my hot little hands. Sebastian found me a heavy anthology of personal essays. As the shopkeeper rang me up, he paused at that one. “Is this one free or $1?” As I might have mentioned, I love used bookstores.

We returned to home base for rosé and cold celery stalks smeared with pimento cheese. Everyone retreated into their books for a quiet hour or two. Later, we drove a few miles on empty back roads lined with coneflowers to reach a swimming pool tucked next to river. Here, a surly teenager served ice cold canned sodas and greasy hamburgers.

How delightfully far it all felt from New York! On the Sunday drive back to the train station, my damp swimsuit tucked back inside my suitcase, we got to talking about quality of life. How that can mean walking five minutes to your office and having the things you love––swimming holes, bookstores, bibimbap, and really, really good iced coffee––easily accessible. New York has everything anyone could ever want. But to get to those things, we have to travel; even my best friend lives over an hour away by subway.

Some day, perhaps, I’ll settle in that kind of perfect place where indie craft fairs and ethnic food are enveloped by a wide natural world teeming with trails for hiking and clear lakes for swimming. (Any leads on places that match this description, by the way?) Until then, my new goal is to focus on the living the charmed life at hand. That means sprucing up the apartment I actually live in (instead of dreaming about moving), climbing in bed with an old novel, its brittle, brown pages and that wonderful old book smell, lulled to sleep with the story of what happens when a group of Bohemians face up to love.

I used to have a very clear sense of personal style, and it involved a cadre of $20 vintage sundresses. But as my early twenties turned into my late twenties, sometimes these bare dresses seemed a tad too costumey and young. My style needed to grow up, if only by an inch or two.

I have been slow to convert to separates, in part because I do not have that magical skill of grabbing this, grabbing that, and putting something together that is chic and surprising and utterly right. I like the grab-and-go appeal of dresses. But after a long visionary planning session with a friend, I now see the virtue of a-line wrap skirts and crisp cotton blouses and low-v t-shirts. Especially because I am in love with the wrap skirt in Diana Rupp’s Sew Everything Workshop.

This one turned out a little less perfectly than my first try, made last year in a light summery linen. Perhaps I was less confident without my mom at my side to troubleshoot. I did learn some important sewing lessons, though, ones I will swear by on all future projects.

1. Tackle a project bit by bit, an hour here, and hour there (that 5-hour window of free time never seems to materialize anyway).
2. When you start to get frustrated, do not soldier on. Take a break and come back to it with fresh eyes.
3. A sloppily cut pattern will result in sloppily pinned fabric, which will in turn, end up as a sloppily sewn seam. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but slapdash work along the way will turn into a slapdash looking skirt.

Wonkiness aside, I’m proud of this skirt. I am consistently amazed by the miracle of sewing. What sort of genius invented that machine, which makes no sense to me in its separate parts, yet somehow works? I do not, apparently, excel at spatial reasoning, my brain working overtime to envision the flatness of the fabric being transformed into a new form with shape and movement. It is so cool. And then there is that sense of involvement that just never gets old to me: having a hand in creation, actively crafting instead of mindlessly purchasing. I love that feeling of hunkering down into a process, sinking my teeth into the making of a skirt, and in some small way, the making of a life.

A big leap there, I know, and I hope I didn’t lose you. But it’s the same thing we’re always talking about here in roundabout ways but which maybe hasn’t been explicitly mentioned lately. These “lifestyle blogs” aren’t just trying to make you feel like your life should be art directed and perfect, that you should be taking the time to squeeze a gallon of lime juice for your next fiesta and if you’re not you’ve got your priorities all screwed up. At least this one isn’t. This blog is about bringing attention the thing things we care about, creating a life that means something because we’re actively creating its delights.

When we’re making dinner and making things, we’re engaged in a process––slipping in via small, unassuming access points to bring a meaningful attention to our lives. We can certainly bring that same attention to waiting in line at Taco Bell for our nachos bell grande, but somehow––maybe it’s the hairnets and the muzak––it’s easier to tune out there. But when we have the cheese grater and the knife right in our own hands, when we hold the scissors and sharp pins, there’s no choice but to pay attention, to bring awareness to our days and how we’re living them. Which, at their ordinary best, can involve chowing down on homemade Mexican food in really cute, imperfectly-sewn skirts.

To be completely honest, summer isn’t my favorite season. In fact, for me, at least, summer needs more of a public relations campaign than winter. I wilt in the heat and have been known to get a bit grumpy when I’m hot. But I do love to cool down with a cold glass of wine in the shade and keep things airy in cotton poplin sundress. So, in order to celebrate what the season does have to offer, here’s a list of many of the season’s charms:

1. lemonade stands
2. whirring vintage fans
3. sundresses
4. fireflies
5. wildflowers by the highway
6. s’mores
7. easy grilled dinners
8. summer thunderstorms
9. the long, lingering daylight hours
10. fireworks
11. marching bands in parades
12. linen
13. the return of Mad Men
14. cold watermelon
15. napping in a hammock
16. sunglasses as headbands
17. the smell of sunscreen on kids
18. farmer’s markets at their most glorious
19. a chelada on a hot day
20. picnics
21. daytrips to the beach (and the reminder of it with sand everywhere)
22. iced tea in mason jars
23. espadrilles
24. bocce
25. swimming
26. halter top strings dangling down your back
27. outdoor movies
28. long hikes in the cool, quiet woods
29. sandcastles
30. wavy, sexy beach hair
31. saltwater taffy
32. camping
33. drippy ice cream cones
34. yoga outside
35. easy entertaining on your porch or in your backyard
36. lying on a floating wooden platform in the middle of a lake
37. croquet with a pimm’s cup
38. kids playing in sprinklers and open fire hydrants
39. street fairs
40. horseshoes
41. a fresh pedicure tucked into fancy sandals
42. Lillet on the rocks with a slice of orange
43. so-golden-you’d-never-know fake tans
44. visiting national parks
45. outdoor concerts
46. sno-cones
47. big, floppy hats
48. canoeing
49. sheer, pretty make-up
50. vacation, staycation, or just giving yourself a quick relaxation break
51. iced coffee
52. the sounds of the ice cream truck
53. raffia, jute, and straw anything
54. braids
55. eating outside
56. sleeping in tents (in the backyard or the wilderness)
57. crisp, cool cotton sheets, dresses, and shirts
58. the seasonal return of rosé
59. going to a baseball game
60. fresh basil and mint growing on your windowsill
61. homemade posicles
62. sunny days = sunnier moods
63. blowing bubbles
64. getting lost in a juicy novel for an afternoon
65. water balloons
66. car wash fundraisers
67. rooftop parties
68. road trips (and kitschy roadside attractions)
69. corn dogs
70. frisbee
71. the ripest, most luscious tomatoes
72. collecting seashells
73. mini golf
74. lobster rolls
75. state fairs (and food on sticks)
76. flea markets and antique fairs
77. staying inside when you’ve had too much sun, blasting the a/c, and watching movies
78. retro bathing beauty swimsuits
79. country church suppers
80. pretending to be Amèlie on Bastille Day
81. driving with the top down
82. crickets
83. the sound of lawn mowers
84. open windows
85. kids in sunglasses
86. sand between your toes
87. sitting in the shade on a hot day
88. the sound of ocean waves
89. blackberries
90. a cool breeze on a hot day
91. flip flops
92. the smoky smell of people barbecuing in the evenings
93. relaxed attitudes
94. surfing
95. spotting hot air balloons
96. skinny dipping
97. dogs with their heads out car windows, tongues wagging
98. bicycles built for two
99. snorkeling
100. neighborhood block parties
101. the weightlessness of floating with the sun on your face

What did I miss?

image via LIFE