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I got invited to a party! Oh boy!
Well, not just me, everyone in the Advanced Toastmasters club, where I had been a guest a couple times, was invited. But after that stupid party, I never went back to that club…
The girl with the harp from last week’s post, Eily, told me she wasn’t attending my toastmasters club because she was getting so much value from the Advanced Club. “You could go too.”
Because Eily is so nice, and because she grew up without running water, I feel safe around her, but still, I didn’t have the guts to say more than a soundbite: Besides, there wasn’t time to tell her my story. I only said, “I had my feelings hurt at a party of theirs.” (Not “ours,” but “theirs”)
… The party was near Christmas, where “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure!” The “spending limit,” was to bring something from home you were willing to part with, of about a dollar’s worth, and wrap it up.
Back at my house, until the night of the party, I had stored my fleece overalls in a big tin, a tin with a wrap-around picture of peaceful cows under trees at twilight, with their barn awaiting them in the background. I felt awe at how the artist managed to paint the sky “dusky,” and how it changed colour from ground to stars. No printing on the tin or lid, just the picture. Well. Not only did I gaily wrap it, but first I rolled up some long lengths of newspaper and put them around it too, hiding the geometric shape, making more of a fun mystery. I doubt I put something inside to make an intriguing rattle—that would have been gilding the lily.
We did some usual party stuff, and then came the anonymous presents, one by one. I remember looking in askance at one present, a coconut-rice chocolate Bounty bar, while wondering: Why would anyone bring a mundane present, of zero creativity, that just gets eaten?
Time for the present from me: A man started pulling apart the wrappings. Then came the harsh voice of a witch: “What are those—are they newspaper things? That’s just stupid.” The man got down to the pretty tin. “What is that?” grated the unfeminine witch “Hey, it’s only a stupid popcorn container. Who would ever wrap that?” Who indeed. And who would ever attend a party that included a witch? A witch everyone would condone, enable and approve. Nobody told her “hush,” and nobody said “Wow, such a beautiful painting.” And now I was out a really nice tin.
I’m sure I kept a straight face without turning red, or white, or any revealing combination of colours. The party swirled on and I had no chance to go over and ask my friend, as a perception check. Or, to be honest, there was no chance I would embarrass myself by asking. I went home feeling too naive, too poor, and with all my “oh boy’s” used up. In a small voice I said to myself, “I guess I could have wrapped a Bounty bar…”
Looking back on those philistines, that witch and my pretty tin, I think of a quote from essayist Dorothy Allison: “Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.” … Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know For Sure, 1995
… I’ve got nothing against rich people—what the scientists call the “middle class.” In fact, by being a university graduate, I suppose I’m an honorary member of the middle class myself. Another honorary member would be the Boss. He’s done well. I’m sure his television set was really big, and in colour too, on the day he sang in disgust, “Fifty-seven channels, and nothing’s on.” If rich people think a candy bar they can gobble down is better than something real then maybe it’s because they own far more than 57 things— so their stuff is “nothing” to them. Does this mean they don’t collect buttons to sew on? Don’t put patches on their old blue jeans? I guess they don’t, not if their stuff is “nothing.” Must make it real easy to de-clutter.
When I was a boy, with parents who came of age during the Great Depression, we’d economize by wearing sweaters in the house and turning the thermostat down. We’d re-use and we’d repair. Now I’ve moved on. If I yearn, looking out my window onto a Sunday morning sidewalk, wishing I was stoned, then I don’t want to complain, “My fingers are cold and nobody loves me.” I can’t control love, but I can surely control my thermostat.
Owning my own place now, I always keep it T-shirt hot. “Screw the expense!” Eily’s mum and dad have visited. They knew I’d one day have a home of my own, but I never dreamed I’d have nice pretty wall to wall, warm-to-the-touch, linoleum… Hurray!
…
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Back to Dorothy Allison: After writing the novel Bastard Out of Carolina, she wrote, in my own words, (from poor memory) “I’m an incest survivor, an abuse survivor, a feminist, and a lesbian: And none of those things have affected me as much as growing up poor.”
Sean Crawford
Under the northern lights
November 2020
