This week – a holiday weekend in Canada (Happy Canada Day!) and in the United States (Happy 4th!) – Stasha has given us an easy list: ten questions. If you’re looking for a friendly place to hang out, stop by the yeahwrite hangout grid: I’m guest hosting the front porch conversation over there this week, so come keep me company.
1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, and find line 4. What is it? From Father’s Day, by Buzz Bissinger, a brilliant and brave account of a father’s cross-country trip with his son Zachary, who suffered brain damage at birth. It’s an amazing book: “In previous lives, we had obviously both appeared in Waiting for Godot. And perhaps written it.”
2. How many times a day do you say Hi? Er…lately? Not very many because I spend most of the day inside staring at my computer. I say hello A LOT to my keyboard. Occasionally to Husband; sometimes to my children. There are a few “salaams” here and there, but not a lot of “hi.” Hmm.
3. Have you ever worn a uniform? Black pants, white shirt: the uniform of waiters everywhere. Sometimes with an apron, sometimes with a stupid-ass bowtie, always with black shoes. A hideous pink-and-brown polyester apron over my white shirt when I worked behind the counter at a fudge store in Mackinac Island one summer. Thank god I was fired and the apron had to be returned. I thought about burning the apron but it was made of polyester and probably would’ve just melted into a pink vomiticious puddle.
4. What do you think about the most? kidshusbandwritingworkbookmotherfamilyweatherheatlosetenpounds
5. How many keys are on your keyring? Three: house, office, Husband’s office. There is a separate ring with a car key and a house key, which Husband and I pass back and forth, depending on who is driving where on a given day.
6. What was the last thing you bought? Some really lightweight trousers that zip off into shorts. Not my usual style but am getting ready for our Rather Significant Trip next week. More on that later.
7. Are you growing anything these days? I have one small pot of basil on the windowsill. I wish I had a yard, or even a place to put some big pots with more herbs. I miss my big terrace in New York, where by this point in the summer, I would have killed several tomato plants, any number of herbs, and several flats worth of petunias. The morning glories thrived, and the sunroses. Everything else got crisped.
8. What is under your bed? Husband’s shoes. Dust. The upside of moving around the world? You shed a lot of crap, including most of what had lived (for decades) under the bed. Of course, much of that crap is in our storage facility, waiting for us to return. If there should be a fire in a storage facility in Westchester sometime late next year, it wasn’t me.
9. What is most important in life? Well, happiness. Health. Imagination. Work that matters. (And within “happiness” I include those people who bring me joy: Husband, kids, family, friends.). Tom Lux has a great poem about work and love, and loving work: “A Horatian Notion.”
10. What is the strangest word you used this week? Pilgarlic. (Liam asked me for some of my favorite words, and this one is near the top. Cress Delahanty, a book I adored when I was growing up, makes a fantastic list of words, and some of them I adopted as my own).
What would your answers be to the questions on this list?
