I Feel Great About My Hands

… in the Glebe, Sunday between 1 pm and 3 pm — 846 Bank Street — thanks to the generous support of Ted Britton — the kind of guy every neighbourhood should have.

In fact, last night on CBC Radio’s As it Happens, Carol Off interviewed the Orange-prize-winning author Ann Patchett about her newest venture: opening an independent bookstore in her neighbourhood after all the existing ones had closed down. Given the precarious states of both publishing and book retailing, the act seems above and beyond the call of duty (shouldn’t it be enough that this fabulous writer has given us the pleasure of being transported by Bel Canto, Truth and Beauty, and Run, among other titles?)

But one of the things that makes a neighbourhood is the quality of the local retailers. And Britton’s, a Glebe fixture since 1966, keeps an impressively diverse collection of newspapers and magazines. Ted Britton has run the business since 1978, and he goes out of his way to stock books on issues of both local and national interest, and to support writers with informal signings.

If you were inconvenienced by my unceremoniously cancelled appointment earlier this week at Chapters, I hope you can make it to Britton’s on Sunday instead.

It’s a mixed blessing when the google alert you receive in your email inbox links you to a website which tells you that although BC’s Okanagan Regional Library system possesses five copies of your book, all of them are in circulation, one has given you a four-star review, and 12 people have placed holds on the collection.

Because at first you think, wow, five copies, all checked out, and a dozen readers eagerly awaiting their return!

But then you wonder, well, how eager could they really be if they’re prepared to wait for a copy to become available?

And, moving into decidedly uncharitable waters, you grouse, come on, people: four stars! couldn’t you go out and buy the damn book? So Chapters won’t return it to the publisher?

But then you remember that even 22.95 plus tax is a luxury for lots of people, libraries are critically important institutions, and you should feel grateful that the book is being acquired — and read — in communities across the country.

Speaking of Chapters, however, I’d like to express my abject apologies to any Ottawa readers who may have showed up at the Rideau Centre outlet last night, thinking I would be on hand to sign a copy of the book. It’s painful for a professional communicator to admit that miscommunication was responsible for the mix-up that saw Chapters book someone else into a slot that had been reserved for me, but there you are. And I’m sorry if anyone was inconvenienced.

In the meantime, I can assure you that the power of the collection without my signature is in no way diminished. (However, since I live in Ottawa, if you really wanted a copy of the book personally addressed to your beloved Aunt Mimi, or your best friend, Pat, that could be arranged. See next post.)

And to think I was concerned about critics calling the collection “uneven”…

Instead, the reviewer — a female writer over the age of 50 who I didn’t know and therefore didn’t think to invite to contribute to the book — began her broadcast commentary on I Feel Great About My Hands by describing me as “left leaning” and my organizing principle as “fascistic”. (But what does she really think, you might be wondering.)  And then she went on to complain that I had failed to include the voices of any welfare moms or plastic surgery queens. (um… really?)

The rational part of me dismissed the critique because she, did, after all, allow that a third of the pieces in the book were brilliant. She quoted from the entries written by Mary Walsh, Lorna Crozier and Meri Collier. And — I’ve done the math —  she must also have appreciated at least another eight or nine.

But the sensitive, occasionally insecure, emotional part of me (and yes, it likely is the bigger part), was a bit stung. A week later I’m still writing her pithy notes in my head and having fantasy encounters which involve me delivering withering refutations in front of a large and sympathetic audience of people who laugh at my witticisms and line up to get their copies of I Feel Great About My Hands signed afterwards.

Let’s start with “left-leaning”. I think the reviewer in question may have lazily cobbed this characterization from another review, but the truth is, in the 35 years since I became eligible to vote, I have cast ballots for candidates representing every major political party. Not even my husband is privy to the details, let alone which ones I endorsed for reasons of partisan affiliation, support for a particular issue, or the ultimately unfulfilled promise of a financial kick-back. (Kidding.) But if my purported lefty-ness was truly a crucial component, wouldn’t I have gone out of my way to include the missing welfare moms (or at least a union organizer)?  Really, what was I thinking? Why didn’t I badger a few women raising children in impoverished circumstances to donate their labour and talent to my cause with no expectation of compensation?!

I confess, it didn’t occur to me. Every month when I’m paying the smaller portion of my bills, I’m reminded of how lucky I am to share my life and corresponding expenses with a financially successful partner.  I well know what a luxury it is to be able to marshall the kind of time and energy necessary to tease insights and entertainment out of tightly crafted sentences. And although I also know a few financially struggling writers (apologies for the redundancy) who rely on coffee shop wifi and/or work retail to supplement the meagre income that writing often affords, none of them are currently collecting welfare or raising children. Sorry.

In fact, in recruiting contributors to the collection, I emailed twice as many interesting and outspoken women as ultimately appeared in the book. Recipients of my invitations were racially diverse, geographically spread out, and affiliated with every major political party. Some of them were more enthusiastic than others; more than a few promised to send me something but didn’t get around to it;  but only one sent me a snarky note ridiculing the endeavour and the cause it supports. C’est la vie.

As for ignoring the voices of any plastic surgery queens, well, um, OK — guilty as charged. Unfairly perhaps, I generally imagine that people who are addicted to needle- and anaesthetic-assisted cosmetic enhancement are perhaps less likely than the average woman to welcome the sometimes dubious benefits of aging. And yes, that was my organizing principle: I didn’t forbid anyone from acknowledging the gravity-induced disappointments of extra years (see pages 1 through 243; nor did I edit out the nurmorous references to hot flashes, gray hair or memory loss. But because I did encourage contributors to also share something that they genuinely appreciated about having been on the planet more than half a century, apparently I’m a fascist.

The ultimate irony, however is this: the reviewer dissed the collection for being “derivative” (riffing off Nora Ephron‘s title, collecting women’s voices like Dropped Threads — and countless other anthologies — have.) But she’s named her own blog a variation on “Stuff White People Like”…

So, really.

Informed Opinions – the non-profit project that’s benefiting from every copy of I Feel Great About My Hands you buy for your sister, mother, friend or colleague — sent out electronic postcards this week to everyone on our mailing list, as a reminder of what we’re up to and why. If you’d like us to email you a copy, so you can share it with friends likely to smile at how the relationship turns out, just visit the project site here, and sign up in the box on the right hand side of the home page.

You know when you stay in that hotel? Yeah, that one — with the designer lobby featuring the funky purple chairs that you’d love to take home (if only “home” were a 2,000-square-foot Manhattan loft?) …The hotel that’s only accessible when you’re traveling on someone else’s expense account?

But never mind the furniture, it’s the bathroom you really appreciate, and not just because it’s spacious and understated (although, of course, it is).

And there you are, leaning over the sink, about to wash the minor vestiges of mascara and blush that still remain on your face 16 hours after you first applied them, and you glance up into the mirror and are stunned by your reflection: because the lighting has taken 20 years off the mug that’s staring back at you, and it now no longer features wrinkles, age spots or, in fact, pores.

But you’re not paying that much attention, not yet. You’re merely noticing that you don’t actually look like you’ve just delivered an all-day workshop in an airless university classroom, during which you consumed not one but two cinnamon swirl Danish pastries and a Nanaimo bar (because all of the supplied sandwiches contained meat, which you don’t eat – and no, you realize this rationale doesn’t make sense).

You think it’s because you’re having a good hair day (you always think it’s your hair – your husband is convinced that’s all you can see when you look in the mirror), and it’s true, you are having a good hair day. But it’s not your hair; not even a good hair day can eliminate the bags under your tired eyes.

No, it’s the lighting. The lighting is muted, gentle. It’s diffused. It eases out from behind the perimeter of the mirror, casting a soft halo of warmth and… generosity – yes, there’s no better way to explain it: The lighting is generous.

And suddenly you feel good. You could look in that mirror all day. In fact, your husband is even now knocking on the bathroom door because you’ve been in there quite some time already. He wants to know if you’re all right.

All right? You wish he’d join you in the bathroom with the camera. The one he occasionally flashes when you’re convinced you’re not having a good hair day, and the light is harsh and punishing, not generous and angelic.

But you won’t fully appreciate what a gift muted lighting can be until the next day when you’re dashing past a department store window in the cold light of an October morning and you catch sight of yourself in its reflective glass – and shudder at the contrast from the night before… and then again later that evening when you repeat the face-washing experience illuminated by the unforgiving bulbs that surround your own bathroom mirror.

It’s at this moment that you mentally abandon all plans to invest in new art supplies and instead start stalking high end bathroom and lighting stores in search of the magical mirror/light fixture, or what you’re now referring to as your “new best friend”…

It’s not that I’m not attached to how I look, or spend more time than you would imagine on fixing my hair or sweating on an eliptical machine, but when I read Nora Ephron’s essay “On Maintenance” a few years ago (it’s the second piece in I Feel Bad About My Neck), I wasn’t really feeling the pain of the hours she catalogued.

However, in the past week or so, my daytimer has had to accommodate  two mammograms, one ultrasound, a bone densomiter test, a visit to my dermatologist and a treatment from my friendly osteopath. None of these were precipitated by actual health problems; they’re all preventative and would therefore qualify as “maintenance” (albeit health, not beauty).

My new colleague, Claire, wise beyond her twenty-something years, has refrained from  commenting on the crater this time investment has created in my productivity, but I’m concerned about the message it’s sending: I’m only 53, after all.

Maude Carlyle: no resemblance to your stereotypical mother-in-law

But it reminds me of the conversation I had with Marion back in April, just after the book was published. When I told Marion, a scientist now in her 80s, that the subtitle of the collection was “and other unexpected joys of aging”, there was a pause on her end of the line, and then she asked — not unkindly –

and what would you know about aging, Shari?

I had to admit, she had a point. Relatively speaking, a 53-year-old knows almost nothing about aging. And — having witnessed up close the plethora of health and mobility issues affecting Marion’s sister, Maude, my beloved former mother-in-law — not to mention her dear husband Allan, and my own much cherished parents — it’s not like I don’t appreciate the difference.

But that underlines one of the insights I had in the process of writing and editing the book. As I recalled in my introduction, reviewing a series of TV commentaries I taped in the 1990s was an illuminating experience.

I remembered the experience as deeply fraught. Unlike crafting arguments for the newspaper or radio, where my unshaped eyebrows or unsuitable clothing in no way interfered with the persuasiveness of my prose, TV commentary demanded an unprecedented degree of appearance vigilance. Borderline brilliant wit could be easily and irrevocably hijacked by wind-whipped hair, my nose in profile, or visible evidence of my face’s recent intimacy with a pillow.

But watching the commentaries 15 years later, what struck me more than anything was how surprisingly okay I looked—if only relative to today. What exactly was my problem, I wondered. And that’s when I made the leap into the realm of French novelist Colette.  It was she who famously observed, “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I had realized it sooner.”

At that moment I vowed to keep on realizing that how I look and feel this year is likely better than I will next.

 

 

Brownies are not my only criteria for accepting invitations to attend book club discussions of I Feel Great About My Hands, but they don’t hurt.

Award-winning short story writer, Renate Mohr

Last night Hands’ contributor Renate (Levity in the Face of Gravity)  Mohr invited me to attend the monthly meeting of her Ottawa book club. Hearing half a dozen interesting and articulate women talk about which of the essays most resonated with, entertained or provoked them — different for everyone — was a very gratifying experience.

Truth be told, I had no idea chocolate (OR wine and cheese!) would be served: the feedback itself was incentive enough. And the experience reminded me that there are likely enough other insightful ruminations on the advantages of aging to fill a couple of additional volumes of this collection.

If you have some thoughts you might be interested in putting to paper — or know a woman whose analysis you’d like to see in a subsequent book — please let me know.

I’ve just read a wonderful essay I wish was in the collection. Penned by performer, broadcaster and playwright, Rita Shelton Deverell, current holder of Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax. Called “Power Wrinkles”, Rita’s essay lays out how this celebrated  and productive artist/activist apportions her time in her 60s, versus how she used to divvy it up in her 20s.

Rita ends the piece with a story about “breathtaking visual artist” Lorraine Malach. She writes:

Lorraine used to say “I have to get this painting, this series, this ceramic mural done while I’m alive.” Some of our friends worried. They said Lorraine was brooding on death.

Lorraine died in 2000 while working on a mural “The Story of Life” for the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. Go see it. It’s unglazed, as Lorraine left it, in the foyer of the grand new museum.

I know now that Lorraine was not brooding on death. She was simply expressing a complex truth. The work we have been given to do we can only do while we’re alive. Do we think someone else will get our work done, make our contribution, for us? 

The power of wrinkles is to get the job done.

Originally published in CanPlay magazine in 2007, Rita’s essay is available online in its entirety courtesy of Women in Film & Television Atlantic.

I have seen my future – and if I’m lucky, it may look a bit like Editta Sherman’s present. The prospect fills me with an astonishing sense of satisfaction.

Ever since my teenage years, I’ve entertained the fantasy that one day I would grow up to live in a large unstructured old style converted warehouse loft apartment. The floors would be hardwood and hard worn. Natural light would flood in from a bank of leaded – and no doubt drafty windows – along one wall, the furniture would be minimal but comfy, and I would have lots of room to dance and make interesting and beautiful things with my hands.

In my youth, I imagined I would realize this ambition sooner rather than later. I saw it as a natural accompaniment to the work I believed I was intended to do in visual art. And even though I didn’t identify as a feminist until a decade after I came of age, there was no man in my picture. (Which is odd, now that I think about it, because I’ve always been pretty attached to having romance in my life. But I envisioned creativity not kids as my destiny and so perhaps the loft took the place in my imagination that was left vacant by the fantasies others had of white picket fences and children.)

And although I’ve spent much of the past two years thinking, writing and speaking about aging, until now, it’s been very difficult for me to conjure up a picture of what I want my own advancing years to look like. (Maybe this is classic denial, and holds for everyone?)

But it’s been years since I had a secure job from which I might yearn to retire (and, correspondingly, a pension that might support me in doing so!) I have no children of my own, and no immediate prospect of even step-grandchildren, either…  No interest in playing golf or cribbage, in moving to a warmer climate… And no inclination to take up bridge or travel a lot more than I already do.

Yet I’ve never thought it likely that I would just keep on keeping on… I have imagined that eventually things would shift into what Jane Fonda refers in her new book, Prime Time, as a “third phase” where things would be different somehow, if not appropriately described as “retirement”. And now, courtesy of Eddita Sherman, I have a picture of a potential final act that’s enormously appealing.

A New York City portrait photographer in her late 90s, Sherman makes a guest appearance in the recent documentary film about iconic New York Times fashion columnist/photographer, Bill Cunningham.  Like Mr. Cunningham, Ms. Sherman lived for half a century in an artist’s studio at Carnegie Hall, only losing her battle to remain there last year. Does she still take photographs? It’s not clear in the film, but her identity as an artist is undeniable. Watching the footage of her inhabiting her studio, I felt a strong emotional tug, and could suddenly envision myself aging in a place where most of the space was given over to a creative laboratory. (Fortunately for me, the love of my life is open to this vision. And in the unfortunate event that he should predecease me, I now have an alternative that holds some allure.)