There came a time in the 1980s when I tried to convince my mother to let me fly to LA and join The Go-Gos to replace the band’s departing bassist. This seemed completely preposterous to my mother, but only slightly to me, and because it was a mother-daughter battle, I lost spectacularly. (I should note here that I have never been able to play the bass guitar, which was my mother’s first line of attack.) I had to content myself with getting a knock-off Belinda Carlisle haircut at Moultrie’s finest tonsorial parlor (shout out to Barbara’s Cosmetique!) and memorizing all of the band’s songs. There was one that I felt had been written just for me, Girl of 100 Lists:
Ghetto blasters, phony jewels
Cathedrals, castles, making up rules
Trashy novels and leather gloves
This is a list of the things I love
I am the girl of 100 lists
From what shall I wear
To who I have kissed
Check items off
Let nothing be missed
Sing I to myself and my 100 lists
Yes, I am one of those compulsive list-makers, and with the weekend sprawling in front of me, there was no time like the present to make a list of things to do. As I sat in the car in the Home Depot parking lot on Saturday morning, I scrounged a piece of paper in the car and jotted down what I believed to be an ambitious, but totally do-able, list of things that needed to be done — with the secret belief that I would even have time to paint the guest room.
That list appears above, and now you know my secret: I am completely delusional.
The first item on my list was organizing purses — a task that first appeared on my list on July 2, 2014. (Yes, I keep a notebook of lists, and sadly, I am not making that up.) This had been something I had dreaded for three entire years, yet I felt fairly confident that it could get done in no more than an hour yesterday.
So I opened the armoire, pushed my hands against the onslaught of handbags, and carried them over to the bed. The jumble covered the entire surface of the queen sized bed and cedar chest at the end (see: list, #6). I got to work putting up dividers, dusting the armoire, and cleaning out each individual purse before placing it according to color back on a shelf.
Six hours later — SIX HOURS LATER — here is part of what I found:
And in case you can’t tell what everything is from the photograph, here is a list:
9 tubes of lipstick
39 pens
$58 in bills
2 folding fans (what?)
3 individual packages of Kleenexes
150 (est.) business cards — all my own
3 thumb drives
2 MARTA Breeze cards, despite living 4 hours away from the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority system
1 half-finished thank you note
a 2010 calendar, which showed that 7 years ago on that date, I was picking up my children at camp
a 2011 calendar, which showed that 6 years ago on that date, I was doing absolutely nothing
$13.88 in change ($9 in quarters, $3.30 in dimes, $.80 in nickels, and 78 pennies)
a small red diary with a dozen entries, including these three:
*****
12/23/15
from Lois’ funeral: Love is an action word. It is a verb.
12/31/15
Watching Cotton Bowl — Bama’s O-line averages about 6’5,” 300 lbs. Holy crap. It also rewards defensive plays with the Ball Out Belt, a WWE-style belt of swag. I want one.
1/12/16
I’m on the ATL-SAV 10:05 p.m. flight, chock full of Clemson fans. It’s a 717 full of broken dreams.
I saw, and tried to avoid, a law school classmate at the gate. He was saying loudly, I SWORE I’D NEVER FLY COMMERCIAL AGAIN! [Expletive in diary omitted]
*****
It was a chore, and I saw why I had put it off for over three years. Even though it kept me from, say, making a slipcover for the chair in the study (#8), it advanced the ball of amassing a huge Goodwill pile (#9). But on the whole, it felt like I was my own archaeologist, digging through the strata for signs of my own life. I found my grandfather’s funeral bulletin, which evoked the pyramid of Mountain Dew cans and Chiclets erected at his service. The fan with the birds belonged to my grandmother, and I wondered whether she had actually carried it and why I had it tucked in a purse. I discovered evidence that I really should quit grabbing mints every single time I walk into a bank. I unearthed a leather backpack that had carried around our children’s diapers when they were babies. I resolved to add to that diary. I decided not to spend the $71.88 in found money on another purse. I wondered why every purse had a million business cards, and why I never could find one when it came time to hand them out.
And as a final reward, a photo strip from a dozen years ago of my sister, my daughter, and me fluttered out of one bag:
Organize purses (#1) took forever, but it was its own kind of pleasure, and for the last 24 hours, my armoire has looked like this:
Emboldened, I set out to organize jewelry (#3), also a relic from the July 2, 2014, to-do list, and the small shelf in my closet now looks like this:
This morning brought the bottom of the list: plant new plants (#12) and pull out dead stuff (#13). The atmospheric oven has been set to broil, and my front garden had become downright terrifying. Everything but the weeds was suffering in a summer of torrential rain followed by scalding heat. There was even an attack of bugs that looked like gangster ladybugs in armored cars hell-bent on turning a small stand of kale into lace:
But there were reinforcements. I bought a few plants — salvia, celosia, African iris, vinca, and ornamental peppers — that promised a deep and abiding love of sun and heat. None of these plants is my favorite, but desperate times call for desperate measures. So in 100% humidity, wearing bug spray and sunscreen, I braved the heat to pull out weeds and most of the dead things. And even though I wasn’t exactly crazy about what I was planting, I chanted to myself, “You have to go with whatever grows.”
So I got my hands dirty, and I did.
The study remains disorganized (#2); the basket under the sink (#4), the guest room chest (#5), and the cedar chest (#6) have not been cleaned out. The chair in the foyer (#7) and the chair in the study (#8) remain woefully neglected, and the powder room fixtures (#10) are still shoddy. But Pam got her shoes (#11), and I created some order out of chaos (#1, #3, #8, #12, #13).
Good lord willing, with lipstick on and $71.88 burning a hole in my pocket, there will be next weekend, and there will be a new list. My son will be here after an entire summer away, and I think the list will be a very short one indeed: Enjoy having the three people you love the most under a single roof (#1). And in case I need a reinforcement, everything else can wait (#2).
ALC